A federal judge has ruled on a policy from the Trump administration, blocking Immigration and Customs Enforcement from making arrests at immigration courts.  

A Biden appointee, US District Judge P. Casey Pitts, ruled that ICE cannot detain illegal immigrants at immigration courts after the policy was implemented by the Trump administration via executive order last year. Pitts labeled the policy as “arbitrary and capricious” and claimed that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act. 

“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 in the ruling. 

Pitts said that “ICE is not arresting individuals who appear for criminal or civil violations ‘unrelated’ to the arrest but instead arresting noncitizens based on the very immigration offenses for which the noncitizens are appearing in immigration court.”

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