A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Department of Justice counterparts from conducting “blanket” civil arrests in Northern California’s immigration courts, setting up an appellate challenge to one of the Trump administration’s most controversial deportation tactics.
“This situation leaves noncitizens facing a Hobsonian choice in deportation proceedings, between two irreparable harms,” Judge P. Casey Pitts wrote in the Christmas Eve ruling.
“First, they may appear in immigration court and may face arrest and detention,” the judge wrote. “Alternatively, a non-citizen may choose not to appear in court and instead forego the opportunity to seek asylum or other protection from deportation.”
Wednesday’s decision bans ICE and the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review from waiting on asylum seekers and other noncitizens at routine hearings throughout the region — a move that would effectively restore a ban on such arrests that existed before Trump took office.
“Here, ICE and EOIR in advance The policy regarding court arrests and detention in detention facilities provides a standard,” the judge said.
Authorities have long restricted arrests to “sensitive locations” such as hospitals, houses of worship and schools, putting them out of reach of most civilian immigration enforcement agencies.
The designation was first established decades ago by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, ICE’s predecessor agency. ICE was created after the September 11 attacks, and the agency absorbed these bans.
Under President Obama, courts were added to the list. The policy banning most courthouse arrests was suspended during Trump’s first administration and restored by President Biden.
Biden-era ICE internal guidance finds “[e]Conducting civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses may impair access to justice by impeding individuals’ access to the courts. “
However, the agency’s court policy reversed again earlier this year, leading to a spike in arrests and a sharp drop in court appearances, court records show.
Most no-shows are ejected in absentia.
Monthly absentee eviction orders have more than doubled this year, rising to 4,177 from less than 1,600 in 2024, Justice Department data shows.
Since January, more than 50,000 asylum seekers have been ordered deported for failing to show up for court hearings – more than the number of people ordered deported in absence in the past five years combined.
“ICE cannot choose to ignore the ‘costs’ of its new policies — which sideline non-citizens from participating in deportation proceedings — and only consider the purported ‘benefits’ of these policies to immigration enforcement,” Pitts wrote in the stay order.
The ruling could put the San Francisco case on a collision course with other lawsuits aimed at curbing ICE’s incursions into areas previously considered off-limits. The lawsuit was brought by a group of asylum seekers who risked going to court, only to be detained.
One of them, a 24-year-old Guatemalan asylum seeker named Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio, was spared detention simply because her nursing 11-month-old child accompanied her in court, records show. Government lawyers told the court that ICE will almost certainly pick her up at the next hearing.
Judge Pitts ruled Wednesday that such arrests appeared arbitrary and capricious and were unlikely to withstand court scrutiny.
“Widespread civil arrests in immigration courts could have a chilling effect on noncitizens’ participation in deportation proceedings (as common sense, prior guidance, and actual experience with immigration courts since May 2025 all make clear), thereby undermining this central purpose and thus this is ‘an important aspect of the problem’ that ICE needs to consider but fails to consider,” Pitts wrote.
A district judge in Manhattan this fall ruled against him in a similar case, which could lead to a circuit trial and even a Supreme Court challenge to the arrest in 2026.
For now, the Christmas Eve decision applies only to ICE’s San Francisco area of responsibility, which covers all of northern and central California as far south as Bakersfield.
The geographic restrictions are a response to the Supreme Court’s emergency decision earlier this year that stripped district judges of their power to block federal policy except in extraordinary circumstances.
The government told the court it intends to appeal to the Ninth Circuit, where a Trump-appointed judge has shifted the bench to the right of his long-standing liberal reputation.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.