Judge blocks ICE courthouse arrests after DOJ admits false claims

The Trump administration reversed a bipartisan policy on January 20, 2025, hours after inauguration, by revoking Biden-era guidance that had banned civil immigration arrests at or near courthouses. The Biden policy, issued April 27, 2021, had limited courthouse arrests to national security threats, imminent violence, hot pursuit, or risk of destruction of criminal evidence. Before that, the Obama administration had separately limited courthouse enforcement in 2014 to priority public-safety cases. The reversal meant immigrants attending mandatory removal hearings were suddenly vulnerable to arrest just for showing up.

The NYCLU, ACLU, Make the Road NY, and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward Maazel LLP filed suit on August 1, 2025, on behalf of African Communities Together and The Door, two nonprofits providing legal services to noncitizens in removal proceedings. The case, , was assigned case number 1:25-cv-06366 in the Southern District of New York.

ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons, appointed by President Trump on March 9, 2025, oversaw the courthouse arrest campaign. He announced his May 31, 2026 resignation in April 2026. ICE agents arrested people at 26 Federal Plaza, 201 Varick Street, and 290 Broadway throughout 2025 and into 2026, citing ICE Directive 11072.4 as legal authority. That directive, issued May 27, 2025, authorized civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when agents had credible information about a target's presence.

Throughout the litigation, DOJ lawyers for the Southern District of New York cited Directive 11072.4 to defend the courthouse arrest policy before Judge Castel. In his September 12, 2025 order, Judge Castel declined to halt the policy, partly relying on the government's representation of what the directive covered.

On March 24, 2026, ICE legal counsel sent an email to SDNY attorneys notifying them, for the first time, that Directive 11072.4 "does not apply to Executive Office for Immigration Review (Immigration) courts, regardless of their location." That same morning, SDNY lawyers wrote to Judge Castel admitting the error. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton filed the letter stating the government "deeply regret[ted] this error."

The admission meant that every government submission defending courthouse arrests in immigration courts had rested on a document that never granted the authority the government claimed. The American Prospect that ICE had been misrepresenting its legal authority for more than a year.

Judge Castel issued his 15-page stay order on Monday, May 18, 2026, with news coverage publishing May 19. He found the plaintiffs "likely to succeed" on their 📖Administrative Procedure Act claim, specifically that the administration reversed the 2021 Biden courthouse policy without a reasoned explanation, making the reversal "arbitrary and capricious" under 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). The stay also required the government to re-brief its APA arguments from scratch given the March 2026 admission.

The stay bars ICE from civil immigration enforcement at or near 26 Federal Plaza, 201 Varick Street, and 290 Broadway while the merits play out. Exceptions remain for national security, imminent violence, hot pursuit, and risk of evidence destruction, the same narrow carve-outs the Biden policy had used.

The NYCLU called the ruling a vindication for immigrants who faced a "catch-22": attend a legally mandatory hearing and risk arrest, or skip it and face deportation in absentia. NPR's December 2025 analysis found in immigration courts nationwide, with attorneys reporting that word spread quickly that showing up to court could get you picked up.

The American Immigration Council documented that ICE attorneys were simultaneously requesting dismissals of immigration cases at hearings, creating a situation where people who fled and were caught elsewhere faced harder outcomes than those whose cases were administratively dismissed. Courthouse arrests drove case abandonment, which in turn made it easier for the government to obtain deportation orders.

Less than 24 hours after Judge Castel's order, masked ICE agents returned to 26 Federal Plaza on the morning of Tuesday, May 19, 2026. At 9:15 a.m., agents arrested 21-year-old Alexander, a Honduran man, outside a courtroom on the 12th floor. A detention coordinator showed the agents a copy of the order and told them they couldn't make arrests there. "We don't care," agents allegedly told him, according to .

Alexander was represented by the New York Legal Assistance Group and attorneys from the NYU Law School-based New York Habeas Project. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-Manhattan) called the arrest a "blatant violation of a court order" and said "DHS appears to think it makes up the law." Former NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, himself arrested by ICE at an immigration courthouse in June 2025, called the situation a "constitutional crisis."

The defendants in the case include Attorney General Pamela Bondi, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, and Acting Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review Sirce E. Owen. DHS responded to the ruling with a statement: "We will continue to arrest illegal aliens at immigration courts following their proceedings. Nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them."

That position directly contradicts the stay order. Contempt proceedings were available to the court if the government continued to flout the order, though no contempt motion had been filed as of the day of the arrest. The defiance put the administration on a potential collision course with the judiciary over enforcement of judicial orders.

Similar legal battles were underway nationwide. In California, U.S. District Judge Casey Pitts paused Trump administration courthouse arrest policies on December 24, 2025, halting arrests in Northern California. A class-action lawsuit, Pablo Sequen v. Albarran, sought nationwide relief. In Washington, D.C., a federal judge found ICE agents violated warrantless-arrest limits and issued a compliance order. The pattern of parallel litigation in New York, California, and D.C. reflected a coordinated advocacy strategy across ACLU affiliates and allied organizations.

The ICE courthouse arrest campaign stands as one of the most litigated immigration enforcement policies of the Trump second term. Judge Castel's ruling in New York was the first to follow a government admission that its core legal justification never existed.

ICE Directive 11072.4, the May 27, 2025 document at the center of the case, is publicly available on the . It authorizes enforcement at courthouses when agents have credible information about a target. What it does not do, as the government admitted, is authorize enforcement at immigration courts run by the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The distinction matters because EOIR immigration courts operate within federal buildings shared with district court facilities, creating ambiguity that ICE agents exploited, or the government simply misrepresented, for more than a year.

Judge Castel's September 2025 denial of a preliminary injunction had relied on the government's characterization of the directive. The March 2026 admission effectively invalidated that ruling, which is why Castel ordered full re-briefing before addressing the merits of the APA claims.