Judge blocks ICE from making arrests at immigration courts
by Lisa Hornung · UPIJune 24 (UPI) -- A California federal judge issued a nationwide block against the government policy of arresting people at immigration courts and detaining them for more than 12 hours in short-term facilities.
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts wrote in his opinion Tuesday that the policies were "arbitrary and capricious" and violated the Administrative Procedure Act. He said the lawyers representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn't give "reasoned explanations for their actions."
"ICE is not arresting individuals who appear for criminal or civil violations 'unrelated' to the arrest but instead arresting noncitizens based on the very immigration offenses for which the noncitizens are appearing in immigration court," Pitts said in his opinion.
The policy is "based on a false premise" that ICE had properly rescinded past guidance on arrests at immigration courthouses from 2021, and "fails to provide a rational explanation" for removing limits on civil enforcement actions at immigration courts.
"For the avoidance of doubt, simply extending the 2025 courthouse-arrest policies to cover immigration courthouses would not cure those policies' fatal defects. As the Court has previously detailed, the policies entirely fail to address the chilling effect of courthouse arrests on noncitizens' attendance at court proceedings, which is both a critical factor underlying ICE's 2021 guidance and an 'important aspect of the problem' in its own right," Pitts said.
"In sum, ICE's 2025 courthouse-arrest policies are devoid of rational explanation for (or even acknowledgement of) the agency's choices (1) to remove its earlier restrictions on civil arrests at immigration courthouses and (2) not to extend the new policies' limitations to immigration courthouses," Pitts added.
Jordan Wells, senior staff attorney at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, cheered the decision.
"The courthouse is meant to be a refuge for the pursuit of justice, not a hunting ground for ICE. No immigrant, whether appearing in San Francisco, Miami, Chicago or New York, should be forced to choose between their liberty and their day in court," Wells said in a statement to CNN.
Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival said on X: "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."
Pitts also ruled that the detention waiver, which allowed ICE to hold detainees in short-term holding facilities for more than 12 hours, violates the Fifth Amendment rights of detainees because they were subject to "punitive conditions of confinement."
Pitts said that some ICE detainees were held at an immigration center in San Francisco overnight and for multiple days. He said the policy is illegal because ICE "failed to consider alternative options to address its capacity issues," which were the reason for the policy.
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