A federal judge has banned the arrests of migrants in specialized U.S. courts. The decision that complicates Trump’s plans

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A federal judge in California has issued a nationwide block on the Trump administration’s policy of making arrests in immigration courts, ending a practice that has drawn national attention, CNN reports.

Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began detaining migrants in courtrooms across the country, sometimes moments after they entered their pleas.

The measure drew concern from lawyers and human rights advocates, who said the practice turned immigration courts from places where due process was followed into places of fear and punished people who followed the rules.

Tuesday’s ruling is a major blow to the Trump administration, which has repealed longstanding guidelines that limited the enforcement of immigration laws in or near courthouses. Trump administration officials argued that the previous guidance hindered the ability of immigration officers to detain dangerous individuals.

The decision has 71 pages

In a 71-page ruling, Judge P. Casey Pitts acknowledged the “intimidating effect” of ICE’s policy, finding it “arbitrary and capricious.”

“For the avoidance of doubt, simply expanding the 2025 policies on courthouse arrests to include immigration courts would not remedy the fatal flaws in those policies. As the Court has previously detailed, the policies do not at all address the deterrent effect of courthouse arrests on the attendance of noncitizens at court proceedings, which is both a critical factor underlying ICE’s 2021 guidance and an important aspect of the problem itself,” Pitts said.

“In short, ICE’s 2025 policies on court arrests lack a rational explanation (or even an acknowledgment) of the agency’s decisions (1) to remove previous restrictions on civil arrests in immigration courts and (2) not to extend the new policy’s limitations to immigration courts,” Pitts added.

Jordan Wells, senior staff attorney at the San Francisco Bay Area Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, welcomed the ruling.

“The courthouse is meant to be a haven for the pursuit of justice, not a hunting ground for ICE. No immigrant, whether they appear in San Francisco, Miami, Chicago or New York, should be forced to choose between their freedom and the day they have to appear in court,” Wells said in a statement to CNN.

Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival also opined on the ruling: “When a judge sentences a defendant, that defendant is taken into custody. If an immigration judge orders the deportation of an alien, the same should happen. For a district judge to order otherwise is blatant judicial activism in the service of an anti-American agenda that promotes open borders.”