Judge vacates Trump policy allowing arrests at immigration courts
Source: Politico
06/23/2026 07:39 PM EDT
A federal judge on Tuesday vacated the Trump administration’s policies allowing immigration agents to arrest non-U.S. citizens at immigration courthouses around the country, saying the Department of Justice failed to provide “reasoned explanations” for the policies.
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts, a Biden appointee, ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can no longer detain noncitizens at immigration courts after the Trump administration implemented new policies via executive order last year that drastically increased the number of courthouse arrests.
The ruling strikes a major blow to the president’s mass deportation campaign, which was facilitated in part by the removal of certain limitations on ICE’s enforcement tactics. Those changes have led to a sharp rise in arrests at immigration courthouses, where people facing deportation attend proceedings, often pursuing lawful status.
Pitts called the policies “arbitrary and capricious,” adding that new guidelines implemented when Trump took office last year failed to consider the impacts of arresting noncitizens seeking legal status in immigration court. “It is now clear that the lack of connection between ICE’s stated rationales for the 2025 courthouse-arrest policies and the expansion of arrests at immigration courthouses results not from merely unreasoned decisionmaking but a complete lack of decisionmaking,” he wrote.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/23/judge-trump-arrests-immigration-courts-00972996
Link to ORDER (PDF) - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.453807/gov.uscourts.cand.453807.205.0.pdf
Just breaking.
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