Federal court strikes down ICE’s courthouse arrest policy nationwide

A federal court in New York has struck down the Trump administration’s policy of arresting people at immigration courthouses, with the ruling applying nationwide, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The group, which is co-counsel for the plaintiffs, announced the final ruling on October 1 in African Communities Together and The Door v. Todd Lyons, a case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The court found that the policy of mass civil immigration arrests at or near immigration courthouses was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act, the ACLU said. The ruling restores earlier policies that bar such arrests except in rare circumstances. Under it, immigration officers cannot carry out civil enforcement in or near immigration courthouses apart from limited exceptions. The ACLU said the ruling took effect immediately.

The 2025 policy allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrest people at immigration courts, including people attending their own hearings. The plaintiffs, African Communities Together and The Door, sued on August 1, 2025. They are represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, Make the Road New York and the law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel.

The case moved in stages. The court partly denied the groups’ request for a stay in September 2025. In March 2026, the government acknowledged that a 2025 memorandum it had relied on did not authorize any immigration courthouse arrests, the ACLU said. The plaintiffs then asked the court to reconsider, and the court granted a stay on May 18, 2026 that prohibited courthouse arrests. Bloomberg Law also dated that earlier order to May 18. The October ruling affirmed that stay and extended it nationwide.

The plaintiffs also challenged a separate 2025 policy from the Executive Office for Immigration Review that urged immigration judges to dismiss cases without proper procedural protections. The court dismissed that claim as moot because the government had fully rescinded the policy after an earlier order in the case, the ACLU said.

Amy Belsher, director of immigrants’ rights litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said ICE’s “cruel, unjustified policy of conducting mass immigration arrests in courthouses is unlawful and cannot stand.” Oscar Sarabia Roman, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said, “People should not be arrested for doing exactly what the legal system requires of them.”

Katie Rosenfeld, a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, said ICE “cannot abandon those protections without a reasoned explanation.” Harold Solis, co-legal director at Make the Road New York, said, “Today marks a turning point,” and that the focus now shifts to making sure the government fully complies with the decision.

The ACLU cited two examples of arrests at courthouses. One was Dylan, a 16-year-old Bronx high school student arrested at a routine court date. The other was Oliver Mata Velazquez, a 19-year-old asylum seeker in Buffalo who was detained and put on a fast track toward deportation.

A separate case, Pablo Sequen v. Albarran, brought by the ACLU of Northern California, also struck down the courthouse arrest policy nationwide, the group said, and Jurist reported on that ruling. The ACLU’s release did not include a statement from the government or ICE about the final ruling, and it did not say whether the government will appeal.