US Judge Hears Lawsuits Over ICE Arrests at Courthouses, Immigration Check-Ins

After hearings on Tuesday in two related cases, a federal judge in San José is set to decide whether to temporarily block Trump administration arrests at immigration courthouses and check-in appointments.

U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts quizzed lawyers for the government, as well as for the Bay Area civil rights organizations that brought the lawsuits alleging U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has essentially turned mandatory court hearings and ICE check-ins into traps — ensnaring people who are following the rules in hopes of winning a legal way to stay in the country.

The cases are part of a larger legal pushback by immigrant advocacy groups across the country, challenging the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics.

Since May, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been handcuffing asylum seekers and others in the halls of immigration courthouses and at required check-ins with ICE, resulting in more than 100 arrests in Northern and Central California. Many of those arrested had previously been granted conditional release and allowed to remain out of custody, typically after border agents had determined they were not dangerous and would show up for their hearings.

Lawyers representing immigrants in the two cases argued that both the courthouse arrests and the rearrest of people who had been previously released were unheard of before this year — and called the actions arbitrary and illegal.

“Just imagine if the government changed a [policy] and all of a sudden you could be thrown in jail at any time. Imagine how that would harm you. That’s how it harms our clients,” said Bree Bernwanger, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, who is representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging rearrests.

She said the courthouse arrests — challenged in the other case, which was argued by attorneys with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area — are also causing irreparable harm to people trying to defend themselves in immigration court.

If an immigrant fails to appear for a hearing, they automatically lose their case and are ordered deported in absentia.

The plaintiffs have asked Pitts, who was appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden, to halt the arrests while the cases are decided.

Lawyers for the government argued that ICE has the authority to make arrests where and how the agency deems fit. They say new policies for ICE and the immigration courts that now deem arrests in or near courthouses acceptable simply reflect the will of voters who elected President Donald Trump on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration.

In late May, ICE officials acknowledged the courthouse operations in a statement that read, in part: “Secretary Noem is reversing Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets. This Administration is once again implementing the rule of law.”

With regard to rearresting immigrants who are following the law and abiding by the terms of their release, the government lawyers deny there’s a new policy and say the Trump administration is simply reinterpreting the law.

But Bernwanger said the administration has radically reversed a four-decade-long policy of not redetaining immigrants unless there is a material change in their circumstances.

“Congress has never interpreted the detention statutes that way,” she said. “Immigration agencies, under every prior president since these immigration statutes were enacted, have never interpreted the laws that way. And that’s because that’s just not what they say.”

The cases are being heard at a time when California immigration lawyers say they are seeing another new and unprecedented trend: immigrants who are in the process of becoming legal U.S. residents being arrested when they attend their green card interviews.

Late last month, in a ruling on a separate part of the courthouse arrest case, Pitts ordered ICE to immediately improve the conditions in its short-term holding cells in downtown San Francisco, where the agency has begun detaining people for days at a time in a facility not meant for overnight use.

Detainees claimed the conditions were punishing and inhumane. Pitts agreed and ordered ICE to provide mattresses and clean bedding, hygiene supplies and medical care, and to dim the lights at night.

On the current question of halting the arrests while the cases play out, Pitts said he will rule “as quickly as possible.”