Within weeks, there could be a halt to the Trump administration’s practice of arresting immigrants at court hearings in San Francisco, if a district court judge rules in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union and other Bay Area groups challenging the nationwide practice.
Immigration agents have, for months, arrested immigrants after their asylum hearings, placed them in federal custody, and tried to deport them to the countries they have fled from (and, lately, to countries they have never been to).
At stake in Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen et al. v. Sergio Albarran et al. is not whether such a practice is just, but whether it is legal in immigration courthouses across the country.
The government says yes: A federal attorney argued in front of U.S. District Court Judge Casey Pitts on Tuesday that there is precedent for arresting and deporting asylum-seekers before their cases have been fully heard.
Not so, argued Jordan Wells, from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. These courthouse arrests mark a break from 40 years of practice.
About 15 viewers sat on the left side of the spacious courtroom in San Jose. Meanwhile, the right side of the courtroom remained largely empty with the exception of a few journalists.
Those in the audience included about 10 attorneys from the ACLU and partnering firms who had entered into the courtroom with towering stacks of legal binders, which they referenced throughout the course of the morning and afternoon arguments.
Before May, a person who had crossed a border into the United States and asked for asylum could not be detained while their case was underway, unless there was a change in circumstance, such as committing a crime.
Judge Pitts has already ruled on conditions in ICE holding cells in San Francisco.
In late November, he issued a preliminary injunction ordering ICE to immediately provide mattresses, blankets and medical care to people detained there, though attorneys say ICE is violating that order.
The report in question says the ICE has moved its operations to the fifth floor, which is still unfit to hold detainees.
On Tuesday morning, Wells and partnering attorneys argued for Pitts to halt the courthouse arrests altogether, citing “irreparable harms” to those affected. If the pause is granted and the Judge finds it to have a nationwide scope , it could have national effects.
Wells described the situation playing out at San Francisco’s courts as a “horrendous Catch-22” in which immigrants with asylum hearings either “show up to court and face handcuffs, or give up on their American dream.”
Those who do not appear, he noted, are ordered removed in absentia, which ends any hope of legally remaining in the country.
Until May 2025, immigration officials had followed policies that only permitted courthouse arrests when an immigrant posed a clear danger to the public, and arrest elsewhere wasn’t feasible.
But last May, ICE officials issued a memo that opened a legal path for courthouse arrests by granting ICE officers the ability to arrest people at their own discretion.
The new policy catalyzed a shift. Since May, Mission Local has documented more than 120 courthouse arrests between the two immigration courthouses in San Francisco.
Wells told the court on Tuesday that the vast majority of people arrested in immigration court since May have not even been accused of a crime, and the data shows the same.
But, because they are in a federal courthouse, they are much easier to arrest than someone who has committed a crime and is actively fleeing the law.
“These people are sitting ducks,” Wells said.
The government’s attorney argued that a past practice of such arrests does exist. The attorney said that the judge must look to the “full scope from the first Trump administration” to find the few examples he claimed.
When Wells took the podium, he noted that past arrests were made during criminal proceedings in state courthouses — not immigration courthouses.
After two hours of arguments, the judge said he would take both sides under consideration and called for a 10-minute recess, before a group of attorneys with the ACLU began a separate, but related case, Garro Pinchi et al. v. Albarran et al. that challenges the arrests on the local level.
In Garro Pinchi, the ACLU attorneys are arguing against detaining law-abiding immigrants at any location — whether at home, at immigration court or during a routine check-in with ICE.
Around 1 p.m. the court was dismissed and Judge Pitts said that he would take into account all parties’ arguments. An outcome for both cases, Sergio Albarran et al. as well as Garro Pinchi et al. is expected by the end of the month.
If a person is required to appear in court and is not wanted for murder, rape or another violent crime, that person should be free to enter and leave the court.
This was always an outrage. People showing up to their court obligations in good faith should not be targeted for bad faith arrests that thumb their nose at the outcome of the court process. The fact that the court ‘itself’ is a protected space but the hallways in the buildings connecting them are not, that is as much of an obvious catch-22 as anything our fair nation of laws has ever allowed to stand.