DOJ admits ICE cited wrong memo to justify immigration court arrests

Justice Department lawyers sent a letter to U.S. District Judge PKP. Kevin Castel on March 25, 2026, admitting that ICE agents had been citing a May 2025 ICE memo in federal court to justify arresting immigrants inside immigration courthouses. The problem: that memo never applied to immigration courts. It governed arrests at regular civil and criminal courthouses only. DOJ called the error "deeply regrettable" and attributed it to ICE, per .

Judge Castel sits in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of 🗽New York. The lawsuit challenging the arrests was brought by ACAfrican Communities Together and TDThe Door, two New York City-based immigrant advocacy organizations. The admission came in that pending lawsuit, not in response to a judge's order or sanction.

A DHS spokesperson said after the DOJ admission that there was no change in policy: "We will continue to arrest illegal aliens at immigration courts following their proceedings." That statement means DHS is asserting the authority to continue the same arrests, despite having just admitted to a court that the legal memo it relied on to justify those arrests never applied to immigration courts, per .

The policy of arresting immigrants at immigration courthouses began in early 2025. Immigration courts are not criminal courts. People who appear at immigration courts do so specifically to comply with legal requirements. Before the Trump administration's second term, courts were treated as protected spaces where arrests were avoided to preserve the integrity of the legal process.

The duty of candor is the legal obligation that prohibits attorneys from making false or misleading statements to a court. Rule 3.3 of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct, adopted in all U.S. jurisdictions, requires lawyers to correct material misrepresentations they made previously, even if the lawyer did not know the statement was false when made, per the .

The DOJ admission put government attorneys in the position of having previously cited, in court filings, a memo that did not apply to the conduct being defended. Whether the government attorneys knew the memo did not apply, or relied on incorrect information from ICE, determines the severity of the potential duty of candor violation. Judge Castel had not issued a ruling on whether sanctions against government attorneys were warranted as of March 26.

The admission creates several unresolved legal questions. If the May 2025 ICE memo never applied to immigration courthouse arrests, what authority does the government have to conduct those arrests? DHS says it will continue the policy but hasn't publicly identified a different legal basis. People already arrested and potentially already deported under the misapplied policy may have grounds for post-deportation relief, per the .

Courts have in rare cases ordered the government to facilitate the return of people improperly deported, including a DACA recipient case in early 2026 in which Judge Coggins ordered return within 24 hours of a green card appointment.

ICE began arresting people at immigration courts without establishing a formal legal foundation for that specific conduct, then cited a memo in court that didn't cover those arrests. The DOJ filed briefs repeating that erroneous citation for more than a year before the mistake was corrected, per .

Conservative legal scholars have argued that the administrative error doesn't change the underlying authority for courthouse arrests, which they say flows from the president's inherent immigration enforcement powers. Civil liberties organizations and immigration advocates argue that without a specific legal authority cited correctly, the arrests lacked lawful justification from the start.

The DOJ's letter specifically noted that its lawyers had been "informed by ICE that the 2025 ICE Guidance applied to immigration courthouse arrests" and had "discussed with and obtained the approval of assigned ICE counsel before filing every brief in this case and making any oral representations to the Court." That statement shifts blame to ICE's own lawyers while also revealing that DOJ attorneys did not independently verify the scope of the memo before citing it in federal court filings, per .

DOJ lawyers filed briefs, ICE lawyers approved them, and neither caught that the memo being cited didn't cover the conduct being defended. The erroneous citation appears in multiple briefs across an extended litigation period before the DOJ corrected the record.

DHS's statement that courthouse arrests will continue means the legal questions raised by the admission are ongoing. Immigrants who haven't yet been arrested at an immigration court still face the same risk as before the admission. The DOJ said it would identify alternative legal authority for the policy, but as of March 26, no corrected legal basis had been presented to Judge Castel, per .

People arrested under the misapplied policy who were deported before anyone challenged the legal basis may have grounds to challenge their removal. Courts have in rare cases ordered the government to facilitate the return of people improperly deported, though each case would need to be litigated individually.