I. Overview

A. Pointed Summary

• On June 23, 2026, Judge P. Casey Pitts vacated ICE’s 2025 courthouse-arrest policy and 12 hour detention waiver nationwide, ruling both violated the APA.
• The ruling does not ban courthouse arrests outright, it restores limits from before 2025 and leaves ICE free to issue a new, properly justified policy.
• ICE’s defense had already weakened in March 2026. when a DOJ attorney admitted in a related New York case that the policy never actually covered immigration courthouses.
• DHS has signaled it will fight the ruling rather than comply, with General Counsel James Percival calling it “judicial activism.”

B. Executive Summary

The policy was declared unconstitutional on June 23, 2026 by Judge P. Casey Pitts of California. In his decision, he found the 2025 policy of ICE to be “arbitrary and capricious” and thus vacated the policy in accordance with the APA.  Rather than banning arrests at courthouses outright, the new decision allows for a restoration of pre-2025 policies. This follows a DOJ admission in a related New York case that the policy never applied to immigration courthouses. Nationally, surveys indicate that courthouse arrests discourage immigrants from reporting crimes and appearing in court. 

C. Relevance

This decision is significant because it proves that the APA can act as a constraint against executive action separate from concerns of constitutionality, since the ICE policy was struck down because it lacked reasonable explanation, rather than being found solely unconstitutional itself. Additionally, as evidenced by survey results from victim advocates about survivors avoiding court due to fear of running into ICE, the human stakes are vastly important as well. Currently, the reaction from DHS is still pending, so it will continue to be monitored leading up to the midterms. 

II. History

A. Current Stances

For nearly a decade before 2025, ICE limited courthouse arrests to high-priority targets: people with prior convictions or suspected of terrorism or gang activity. ICE narrowed this further in 2021 to cases involving a national security threat or an immediate risk of evidence destruction. That changed when President Trump was inaugurated for a second time, and ICE began arresting people at immigration courts as well, including asylum seekers and others with pending matters appearing for routine hearings.

The administration's legal defense largely collapsed in March 2026, when a DOJ attorney admitted in the New York case that ICE's stated policy "does not and has never applied to civil immigration enforcement actions in or near" immigration courts, and an admission Judge Pitts later cited in finding the agency had failed to provide reasoned explanations for its actions as required under the Administrative Procedure Act. DHS General Counsel James Percival rejected the ruling, comparing it to ordinary criminal sentencing and calling it "naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda".   The ruling stops short of a categorical ban: it does not prohibit ICE from making courthouse arrests entirely, only requires that any policy be backed by a reasoned explanation, leaving the door open for ICE and DOJ to write new compliant policies

Opposition is also building outside the courts. Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced bills aimed at limiting federal immigration enforcement, including a Pennsylvania proposal to ban ICE arrests near courthouses. At the federal level, Senator Bennet’s proposed legislation would ban immigration arrest at courthouses and other sensitive locations absent a court-issued criminal warrant, and would extend that protection to people traveling to or from a courthouse.  Polling suggests the public leans towards this view: a majority of Americans surveyed do not support rescinding sensitive locations protections and believe doing so deters immigrants from seeking necessary medical care.

B. Tried Policy

Limits on enforcement at sensitive sites predate the current dispute by decades, though courthouses were historically treated as a separate, narrower category. An INS memo as early as 1993 required advance approval before enforcement actions at schools, places of worship, or religious ceremonies. ICE formalized and broadened this into the “sensitive locations” policy in 2011, when Director John Morton’s memo barred arrests, interviews, searches, and surveillance at schools, hospitals, places of worship, and sites of public religious ceremonies or demonstrations. Courthouses were not on that list. The Obama administration separately limited courthouse enforcement in 2014, restricting it to “Priority 1 aliens” who posed a risk to national security or public safety. 

The first Trump administration eliminated that limit. Executive Order 13768 removed the 2014 courthouse restriction, directing agencies to target “all deportable aliens” rather than exempting any category and the now rescinded 2018 directive authorized agents to enter courthouses and arrest people present for reasons unrelated to immigration, including domestic violence witnesses seeking protective orders. The effects were measureable: courthouse arrests in New York rose 900 percent from 2016 to 2017, and bar leaders pushed back directly — the chief justices of California, Washington, Oregon, New Jersey, and Connecticut's highest courts all asked the federal government to halt the practice, while ICE's acting director responded that the agency would not apologize and would continue.

The Biden administration reversed this twice: first in April 2021, when a joint ICE-CBP memo banned civil immigration enforcement at or near courthouses with only narrow exceptions, effectively overruling the 2018 directive; then later that year, when it expanded the broader sensitive-areas definitions to include schools, hospitals, places of worship, and other essential-service locations. On his first day back in office in January 2025, Trump rescinded both, and ICE's acting director issued new guidance directing officials to make enforcement decisions "case-by-case" with no "bright line rules" about where immigration law could be enforced. Congress has never converted any version of this policy into binding statute — three decades of guidelines were never codified, the gap that allowed a single executive order to undo them — and the current vehicle to do so, the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, has stalled despite 34 House and 18 Senate cosponsors.

III. Policy Problem

A. Stakeholders

Stakeholders most directly affected by courthouse arrests were those of vulnerable communities. A joint survey conducted by the ACLU and the National Immigrant Women's Advocacy Project (NIWAP) revealed that the fear of deportation, which came from immigration arrests in courthouses, was stopping immigrants from reporting crimes and attending court proceedings. The survey results also revealed that when immigration officers carry out arrests in courthouses, this hinders the ability of operations in other groups such as police officers, prosecutors, defenders, and judges. The survey results were in accordance with responses from 232 law enforcement officers in 24 states, 103 judges in 25 states, 50 prosecutors in 19 states, and 389 survivor advocates in all 50 states.¹ According to the NYCLU, many immigrants who are arrested at courthouses after their hearings are entirely unprepared, not being able to make arrangements for childcare, elder care, or provide apartment and car keys to family members, leaving the families of those detained critically unprepared.

B. Risks of Indifference

Had ICE not been blocked from making courthouse arrests on a nationwide scale, arrests would still be permitted, impacting immigrant populations even further. The most clear consequence would be deterrence of court attendance and  a “chilling effect” on criminal proceedings. Absent the ruling's clear standard that governs arrests at courthouses, the U.S. criminal justice system risks a system of justice that denies access to an entire class of people who are unable to invoke the courts safely out of fear of being deported.² In the past year, attorneys and members of law enforcement reported that the fear of deportation had taken hold of vulnerable immigrant communities and individuals, with some who experienced abusive relationships choosing to stay in those relationships in fear of deportation and being separated from their family. In fact, a recent survey conducted by the Alliance for Immigrant Survivors found that 70% of immigrant survivors were concerned about going to court for matters related to their abuser in fear that ICE would be physically present near or in the courtroom.

C. Nonpartisan Reasoning

The Trump administration has defended the act of courthouse arrests by framing it as part of stricter immigration enforcement, with the goal being to remove dangerous individuals off of the streets in order to make communities safer. Democratic states and some judges have met ICE arrests at courthouses with strong opposition, stating that the risk and fear of arrests prevent people from testifying in trials or seeking restraining orders against domestic abusers. Immigration attorney Matt Cameron of Cameron Law Offices and the director of Golden Stairs Immigration Center argues that his concern with ICE is less about courthouse arrests and more about how ICE arrests interfere with prosecutor operations.²³ Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan research institute that examines the economic, social, and security impact of immigration, argues that ICE does not want to make arrests at courthouses, but says that the practice occurs because certain Massachusetts city policies restrict ICE from going in and detaining undocumented immigrants in jails. Along with this, Vaughan added that arresting immigrants at their residence can be dangerous for the public, ICE officers, as well as immigrant families.

IV. Policy Options

Policymakers are weighing two main responses to the nationwide injunction.

One option is compliance and policy revision. The ruling does not prohibit courthouse arrests altogether - it restores the pre-2025 restrictions, meaning the administration could revise its policy to satisfy the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirements and refile. DHS General Counsel James Percival has already signalled a willingness to fight back, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda.” The other option is appeal. On the same day as the courthouse ruling, a federal appeals court in DC handed the administration a separate victory, allowing a wider net for expedited removal without a hearing before an immigration judge - signalling a broader strategy of pursuing enforcement gains through parallel legal tracks even as individual rulings go against them. 

V. Conclusions

The ruling is the second setback for courthouse arrests since May, when a federal judge in New York separately barred them at immigration courts in that state. Together, these decisions reflect a growing pattern of judicial resistance to the administration’s immigration enforcement expansion. As appeals proceed, the central question for policymakers remains whether aggressive enforcement can be reconciled with constitutional due process protections - a tension likely to persist well into the 2026 midterms. 

VI. Acknowledgement

The Institute for Youth in Policy wishes to acknowledge Adwaya Yesare for editing this policy brief.

VII. References

Alvarez, Priscilla. “Federal Judge Blocks Trump Policy of Making Arrests at Immigration Courts Nationwide.” CNN, 24 June 2026, www.cnn.com/2026/06/23/politics/judge-blocks-trump-policy-arrests-immigration-courts. Accessed 25 June 2026.

Klasfeld, Adam. “Immigration Courthouse-Arrest Policies Voided by Federal Judge.” Allrisenews.com, All Rise News, 24 June 2026, www.allrisenews.com/p/ice-courthouse-arrest-policies-voided. Accessed 25 June 2026.

Rosen, Jacob. “Judge Blocks Trump Administration from Arresting Immigrants at Courts.” CBS News, 23 June 2026, www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-blocks-trump-administration-immigration-court-arrests/. Accessed 25 June 2026.

Aron, Hillel. “Federal Judge Rules ICE Can’t Make Arrests at Immigration Courthouses.” Courthouse News Service, June 23, 2026. https://www.courthousenews.com/federal-judge-rules-ice-cant-make-arrests-at-immigration-courthouses/.

Beitsch, Rebecca. “Federal Judge Blocks Migrant Arrests at Immigration Courts Nationwide.” The Hill, June 24, 2026. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5938020-federal-court-migrant-arrests-immigration-courts-ruling/.

Gooding, Dan. “ICE Court Arrest Policies ‘Devoid of Rational Explanation’—Judge.” Newsweek, June 23, 2026. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-ice-court-arrest-policies-detention-limits-overturned-12112187.

Herrington, Torrie. “Federal Judge Blocks ICE Courthouse Arrest Policy.” NOTUS, June 23, 2026. https://www.notus.org/immigration/ice-courthouse-arrest-policy-vacated.

Jacobs, Elizabeth. “History of the ‘Sensitive Areas’ Policies and What Is in Place Now.” CIS.org, March 7, 2025. https://cis.org/Jacobs/History-Sensitive-Areas-Policies-and-What-Place-Now.

Lasch, Christopher N. “A Common-Law Privilege to Protect State and Local Courts during the Crimmigration Crisis | Yale Law Journal.” Yale Law Journal, October 24, 2017. https://yalelawjournal.org/essay/a-common-law-privilege-to-protect-state-and-local-courts-during-the-crimmigration-crisis.

Lloyd, Colin. A Large Building with Columns and a Clock on the Front of It. Photograph. November 11, 2021. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/a-large-building-with-columns-and-a-clock-on-the-front-of-it-_JEiyOfC2y8.

National Immigration Forum. “Explainer: Immigration Enforcement at Courthouses and Other Sensitive Locations,” July 23, 2021. https://forumtogether.org/article/explainer-immigration-enforcement-at-courthouses-and-other-sensitive-locations/.

Snider, Sophie. “Bennet Introduces Legislation Targeting Critical Reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement - U.S. Senator Michael Bennet.” U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, May 20, 2026. https://www.bennet.senate.gov/2026/05/20/bennet-introduces-legislation-targeting-critical-reforms-for-immigration-and-customs-enforcement.

Watford, Amanda. “State Lawmakers Stand Ready to Help ICE — or Impede It • Stateline.” Stateline, January 28, 2026. https://stateline.org/2026/01/28/state-lawmakers-stand-ready-to-help-ice-or-impede-it/.