Biden-Appointed Judge Blocks Expanded ICE Courthouse Arrest Policy Nationwide

Judge P. Casey Pitts vacated ICE and EOIR policies after finding the agencies failed to justify the shift under the Administrative Procedure Act. A Biden-appointed federal judge in California on Tuesday vacated Trump administration policies that expanded ICE arrests at immigration courthouses nationwide, ruling in a Northern District of California class-action case that federal agencies failed to justify the change under the Administrative Procedure Act. 

The court’s docket lists the June 23 order as Document 205 in Pablo Sequen v. Albarran, and the order granted class certification and partial summary judgment for the plaintiffs.

DHS General Counsel James Percival criticized the ruling, arguing that people ordered removed by immigration judges should be taken into custody.

“When a judge sentences a defendant, the defendant is taken into custody. If an alien is ordered removed by an immigration judge, the same should happen. A district judge ordering otherwise is naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda,” Percival wrote online.

U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts, who was nominated by former President Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2023, ruled that ICE and the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review had not provided legally sufficient reasoning when they reversed prior limits on courthouse arrests.

Pitts opened the 71-page order by framing the case as an agency-process dispute, not a ruling that the court preferred a different immigration policy.

“For 80 years, Congress has commanded federal agencies to think before they act,” Pitts wrote.

The challenged policies followed a January 2025 shift after President Trump directed agencies to enforce immigration laws “against all inadmissible and removable aliens,” according to the order. ICE then rescinded 2021 guidance that had limited courthouse arrests to defined circumstances, including national security threats, imminent risks of violence or harm, hot pursuit, evidence-destruction concerns or cases in which no safe alternative arrest location existed.

The court said the 2025 policies discussed enforcement benefits but failed to address earlier concerns over chilling effects, safety risks and hearing attendance.

“The policies discuss the benefits of courthouse arrests to the government’s enforcement of immigration laws but do not directly address the concerns raised in earlier guidance concerning chilling effects, safety risks, and impacts on hearing attendance,” Pitts wrote.

Pitts also faulted the government’s explanation for expanding arrests at immigration courthouses.

“It is now clear that the lack of connection between ICE’s stated rationales for the 2025 courthouse-arrest policies and the expansion of arrests at immigration courthouses results not from merely unreasoned decisionmaking but a complete lack of decisionmaking,” Pitts wrote.

The order also vacated ICE’s June 2025 “Nationwide Hold Room Waiver,” which had allowed extended detention in short-term holding facilities, after the court found the agency failed to reconcile the waiver with existing standards and failed to consider constitutional concerns over detention conditions.

The court said the ruling did not categorically bar ICE courthouse arrests but restored prior limits.

“Vacatur does not preclude ICE from conducting civil enforcement actions at courthouses; it merely reinstates ICE’s 2021 guidance and EOIR’s 2023 guidance, which authorized courthouse arrests in defined circumstances,” Pitts wrote.

The ACLU of Northern California, which was among the groups representing plaintiffs, said the ruling applies nationwide and restores earlier courthouse-arrest restrictions and the 12-hour limit for short-term holding rooms.

Neil Sawhney, director of appellate advocacy at the ACLU of Northern California, said the ruling protects immigrants appearing in court.

“By striking down the courthouse arrest policy nationwide, the court has reaffirmed a bedrock principle: no administration is above the law,” Sawhney said.

The Associated Press reported the ruling followed a May decision by a New York federal judge blocking immigration courthouse arrests in that state, while Pitts’ order invalidated the challenged policies nationwide.