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A federal judge in California dealt a significant blow to the immigration policy of the Trump administration on Tuesday by nullifying nationwide the ICE guidelines that permitted widespread arrests of migrants within immigration courts.
Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California signed the ruling in the class action Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen et al. v. Sergio Albarran et al., determining that both ICE and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) acted in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner by implementing their new policies without providing a reasoned justification or assessing their negative impact.
"During 80 years, Congress has instructed federal agencies to think before acting," wrote Pitts in the full text of the ruling.
"That instruction does not require an agency to make the decision that a reviewing court would consider preferable, but it does require that it at least provide solid reasons for the course it has chosen," he added.
The resolution immediately and nationally nullifies three key policies: interim directive ICE 11072.3, issued on January 21, 2025; final directive ICE 11072.4, dated May 27, 2025; and memorandum EOIR OPPM 25-06, dated January 28, 2025, which rescinded previous protections against arrests in immigration court spaces.
The ruling also nullified the so-called Nationwide Hold Room Waiver, a memorandum from ICE dated June 24, 2025, which extended the detention limit in short-term cells from 12 to 72 hours. This measure was implemented by the government due to the lack of space in permanent detention centers following the increase in immigration control operations.
Immigration lawyers who testified in the case described a "chilling effect" caused by the presence of ICE agents in the courts, which resulted in a drastic drop in migrants attending their own hearings, directly impacting their access to due process.
The ruling also indicates that, following the implementation of the new policies in 2025, the civil arrests of immigrants in immigration courts increased significantly.
Data cited in the ruling indicate that in the San Francisco area, arrests went from being very rare to nearing 50 per week.
A former immigration judge who testified during the proceedings stated that she had observed a drastic decline in attendance at hearings following the increase in arrests, a situation the court considered relevant when assessing the impact of the measures.
The class action lawsuit was filed in September 2025 by a coalition that includes the Northern California ACLU, CARECEN, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights.
The judge Pitts had already blocked arrests in the San Francisco area in December 2025; the ruling from this Tuesday nullifies those policies across all U.S. territory.
The decision contrasts with a prior ruling from a judge in Manhattan who decided the opposite in a similar case during the fall of 2025, which raises the possibility of a split between judicial circuits that could bring the matter before the Supreme Court.
For at least a decade leading up to 2025, ICE had restricted civil arrests in or near courthouses to high-priority categories: terrorism suspects, individuals convicted of serious crimes, or gang members.
In 2021, the agency explicitly extended those restrictions to immigration courts, recognizing that arrests in those spaces could "paralyze access to the courts and harm the fair administration of justice."
The judge noted that neither ICE nor EOIR adequately explained why they abandoned those previous conclusions or addressed the risks that both agencies had acknowledged for years regarding access to justice, security within the courts, and migrants' assistance at their hearings.
The Trump administration dismantled those protections from its earliest days in power. With this decision, the court effectively reinstates the restrictions that have for years limited civil arrests in courts to exceptional circumstances.
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