A Federal Judge Stopped ICE From Making Arrests At Immigration Courts. Here’s Why That Could Backfire.

A Biden-appointed judge blocked federal immigration agents from arresting targets at immigration courts — as ICE sources warn that the order could lead to more arrest activity.

Judge P. Casey Pitts of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued the order Tuesday after the Trump administration ramped up courthouse arrests through its mass deportation effort. Pitts labeled the policy as “arbitrary and capricious,” saying the administration “failed to provide reasoned explanations for their actions.”

“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,” Pitts wrote.

“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,” he added.

While Pitts argued that “it is far from obvious that vacating the courthouse-arrest policies will significantly hinder ICE’s operations,” sources told The Daily Wire that the statement may be far from the reality.

Sources within ICE said that when officers can’t nab targets at immigration courts, they are forced to hit the streets in greater numbers resulting in more arrests. One also noted that the change could expose officers and the public to more risks.

“This will once again put at risk the community because officers won’t be able to make arrests in a safe location where the people attending court are screened for weapons and other items that can cause bodily harm. Also, it will once more put officers out in the field, increasing the chance of collateral arrests instead of only the target being apprehended,” an ICE source said.

Another agency source said they have plenty of “at large targets,” adding that the court arrest tactic was an effective tool when it started, but that word got out eventually and “people started to miss their appearances.”

The Trump administration’s use of the tactic led protesters and Democratic lawmakers to show up at immigration courts across the country in attempts to block the arrests.

Former ICE New York Field Office Deputy Director Scott Mechkowski echoed that courthouses, like local jails, “are the single safest place to take a removable alien into custody.”

“The realistic alternative is not ‘no arrest,’ it’s an armed team going into a neighborhood, a workplace, or a home to find that same person at large,” he said.

The ruling also struck down a Trump-era policy that allowed ICE officers to hold detainees in temporary detention rooms for up to 72 hours or more, exceeding the 12-hour holding limit, according to the New York Times.

Homeland Security Counsel James Percival condemned Pitts’ order as “naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda.”

“When a judge sentences a defendant, the defendant is taken into custody. If an alien is ordered removed by an immigration judge, the same should happen,” Percival wrote on X.