No ICE Arrests At Bay Area Courthouses, Judge Rules

BAY AREA , CA — A federal judge has granted a stay on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests at Bay Area courthouses.

District Judge Casey Pitts issued the order Wednesday after hearing a class-action lawsuit filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in September. The stay means that ICE will not be able to make arrests outside courthouses that fall under ICE's San Francisco Area of Responsibility, which includes Northern California, Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan.

The ICE arrests outside courthouses represented a departure from the decades-long bipartisan agreement that courthouses were sensitive locations. The ruling also quoted immigration attorneys and judges who said that ICE arrests were rare outside Bay Area courthouses.

However, after the change in policy, ICE officers started conducting arrests outside courthouses across the country, said Nisha Kashyap, an attorney with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights who worked with the plaintiffs.

In his ruling, Pitts found that ICE and the Executive Office of Immigration Review policy change was made without a reasoned explanation and has had a chilling effect on noncitizens' participation in their court proceedings.

The possibility of being arrested by ICE at court hearings, he wrote in his ruling, forces noncitizens appearing in court to choose between "two irreparable harms." They might skip their court appearance to evade arrest by ICE, but that would have a detrimental impact on their immigration case, putting their future in the United States at risk.

Pitts also noted that the change in ICE's policy regarding courthouse arrests was likely in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal statute that governs the establishment of fair administrative procedures by federal agencies.

While the plaintiffs sought a stay on courthouse arrests nationwide, Pitts limited the stay to the jurisdiction of ICE's San Francisco Area of Responsibility, referring to the recent Supreme Court decision that limited the District Court's authority to issue nationwide stays.

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