Federal Judge Halts ICE Arrests in NYC Immigration Courts

A federal judge has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to stop arresting individuals inside New York City’s immigration court after the government acknowledged it had previously misrepresented the agency’s authority to do so.

ICE officials had argued that officers were permitted to make arrests inside immigration court houses, and numerous immigrants were detained as they exited hearings.

However, in a March letter to the court, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan repeatedly expressed “regret” that his office had mistakenly defended a memo that “does not and has never applied” to arrests made in immigration courts.

U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel had initially declined to block the policy. But after the government’s admission, he reversed course, saying a new order was necessary to “correct a clear error and prevent a manifest injustice.”

In his May 18 ruling, Castel said his earlier decision “relied upon the clearly erroneous premise” that ICE agents were authorized to carry out arrests inside immigration court facilities, according to The Independent.

Unlike federal district courts, immigration courts and judges operate under the authority of the Department of Justice and ultimately answer to the attorney general.

Last year, President Donald Trump’s administration directed immigration judges to dismiss nearly any case once immigrants appeared for their mandatory court hearings, leaving them immediately vulnerable to arrest and deportation before they could appeal.

The policy led to scenes of masked ICE agents patrolling courthouse hallways and detaining immigrants as they exited hearings. Critics described the operations as “ambush”-style arrests that violated due process protections.

In a separate case last year, another federal judge condemned the courthouse arrest policy as a “game of detention roulette.”

Advocacy groups The Door and African Communities Together sued over what they called the Trump administration’s “sweeping, unprecedented campaign of targeting noncitizens” in immigration courts.

According to court filings, ICE Assistant Director of Field Operations Liana Castano sent a memo to all Enforcement and Removal Operations officers on March 19 clarifying that the agency’s courthouse arrest policy “does not apply” to immigration courts “regardless of their location.”

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton later told Judge Kevin Castel that ICE and its legal team had “specifically informed” his office that the memo applied to immigration courthouse arrests.

“Based on our discussions with ICE today, this regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error,” Clayton wrote in a March letter to the court.

The latest ruling “is an enormous win for noncitizen New Yorkers seeking to safely attend their immigration court proceedings,” said Amy Belsher, director of Immigrants’ Rights Litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

“For nearly a year, we’ve watched masked ICE officers ambush noncitizens in courthouse hallways, throw immigrant New Yorkers to the ground, and tear children from their parents,” Belsher said in a statement. “Now, ICE has admitted that it does not and has never had an explanation or justification for conducting mass arrests at immigration courts.”

The Department of Homeland Security defended the practice, saying in a statement that it is “common sense to take illegal aliens into custody following the completion of their removal proceedings.”

“Nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them,” a DHS spokesperson said. “We are confident we will ultimately be vindicated in this case.”

Attorneys for immigrant advocacy groups argued in court filings that there is “no evidence that the agency engaged in reasoned decision-making” before implementing the policy.

“Hundreds of real people — with families, schools, medical appointments, jobs and lives — arrived at immigration courts to attend mandatory hearings only to be summarily arrested by ICE agents outside the courtrooms,” the groups wrote.

They added that immigrants were effectively forced to choose between attending required hearings and risking arrest, family separation, job loss and interrupted medical care, or skipping court and facing removal orders issued in absentia.