Immigration court arrests were blocked nationwide on Tuesday after a federal judge in California halted the Trump administration’s policy of detaining migrants at immigration courthouses. The decision brings an end, at least for now, to a practice that had drawn intense national scrutiny.

How the Practice Began

Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement started detaining migrants in courthouse hallways across the country. In some cases, agents took people into custody just moments after they had pleaded their cases before a judge.

The tactic alarmed attorneys and immigrant advocates. They warned that it was transforming immigration courts from venues of due process into places of fear, effectively punishing people who were doing exactly what the system asked of them by showing up to their hearings.

A Significant Setback for the Administration

Tuesday’s ruling represents a major defeat for the Trump administration, which had rescinded long-standing guidance that previously limited immigration enforcement in or near courthouses. Administration officials defended the change, arguing that the older restrictions made it harder for enforcement officers to apprehend dangerous individuals.

The judge saw the matter differently. In a lengthy 71-page ruling, Judge P. Casey Pitts acknowledged the “chilling effect” of the policy and concluded that it was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The Heart of the Ruling

Pitts made clear that the administration could not simply repackage the policy to fix its flaws. He emphasized that extending the 2025 courthouse-arrest rules to cover immigration courthouses would not resolve their fundamental defects.

His central concerns included:

• The policy failed to address how courthouse arrests discourage noncitizens from attending their own court proceedings.
• That chilling effect had been a key reason behind earlier 2021 guidance limiting such arrests.
• The agency offered no rational explanation for removing its prior restrictions or for declining to extend new limits to immigration courthouses.

In Pitts’ assessment, the 2025 policies lacked any reasoned justification, and in some respects failed even to acknowledge the choices the agency was making.

Reactions on Both Sides

The ruling drew sharply divided responses.

Jordan Wells, a senior staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, welcomed the decision. He argued that a courthouse should serve as a refuge for justice rather than a hunting ground for ICE, insisting that no immigrant anywhere should have to choose between their freedom and their day in court.

The administration pushed back firmly. Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival took to social media, comparing the situation to criminal sentencing. He argued that just as a defendant is taken into custody when sentenced, a person ordered removed by an immigration judge should face the same outcome. He characterized the judge’s ruling as judicial activism advancing what he called an anti-American, open-borders agenda.

A Mixed Day in the Courts

While Tuesday delivered a setback for the administration on courthouse arrests, it also brought a notable victory elsewhere. A federal appeals court in Washington DC handed President Trump a significant win in a separate case tied to his mass deportation efforts.

That ruling allows the administration to broaden the pool of people subject to “expedited removal,” a process that permits authorities to deport individuals without first granting them a hearing before an immigration judge. Taken together, the two decisions underscore the legal tug-of-war now shaping the future of immigration enforcement across the country.