Immigration and Customs Enforcement can no longer arrest immigrants at courthouse hearings or detain them for over 12 hours in short-term holding cells anywhere in the country, a federal judge in California ruled Tuesday.
The ruling expands a temporary order from December that had prohibited both practices in Northern California.
Courthouse arrests came under legal scrutiny last year. Dramatic scenes of ICE agents arresting people during routine hearings were broadcast from 26 Federal Plaza in New York and other courthouses. In San Francisco, protesters clashed with federal agents outside the main immigration court, where hundreds were arrested.
The practice had all but ceased in San Francisco since October 2025. However, it continued in other parts of the country like New York and Texas, said Nisha Kashyap, an attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.
When immigrants were arrested after their hearings, they were often held in cells meant for short-term detention, sometimes for several days, before being transferred to a long-term detention center. San Francisco attorneys, in their lawsuit, demanded and won an end to the practice of holding people longer than 12 hours in these short-term cells.
ICE’s recent practices of arresting people outside court and then detaining them for days in a holding cell were new.
In January 2025, ICE and the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review reversed years of guidance against courthouse arrests when it issued a policy that agents could “conduct civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses” whenever they believed a noncitizen would be present, not just someone who posed a public safety threat.
ICE also used to require its agents to ensure that no one was detained in a holding facility for longer than 12 hours. As enforcement increased, however, the number of people in detention “significantly increased,” an ICE official wrote.
In June 2025, the agency said field offices nationwide could begin detaining people for up to three days or longer in “exceptional circumstances.”
Judge Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California court wrote that neither decision was backed up by clear reasoning required by Congress’ Administrative Procedures Act. He banned both practices, describing them as “arbitrary and capricious.”
Pitts’ ruling was a “crushing blow to some of the Trump administration’s most extreme immigration enforcement tactics,” the plaintiffs wrote in a press statement.
“The courthouse is meant to be a refuge for the pursuit of justice, not a hunting ground for ICE,” wrote Jordan Wells, a senior attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. “No one, immigrants included, should be forced to choose between their liberty and their day in court.”
