On June 23, 2026, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California blocked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from arresting noncitizens at immigration courts and struck down ICE’s 12-hour-detention waiver.
“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 decision-making but a complete lack of decision-making,” U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts said. He explained, “For 80 years, Congress has commanded federal agencies to think before they act. That instruction—codified in the [Administrative Procedure Act (APA)]—does not require an agency to make the choice that a reviewing court might deem preferable. But it demands that an agency at least provide sound reasons for following its chosen course.” Judge Pitts concluded that “each of the challenged policies is arbitrary and capricious in contravention of the APA.”
