Judge vacates Trump policy allowing arrests at immigration courts
Aaron Pellish for Politico reports that 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. Last year, the Trump administration implemented new policies that increased the number of courthouse arrests.
Judge Pitts called the policies “arbitrary and capricious,” adding that the new guidelines 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.
