Setback for Trump administration: California judge blocks immigration detention policy | Today’s news
A California federal judge on Tuesday (local time) issued a nationwide injunction blocking US President Donald Trump’s administration’s policy of making arrests in immigration courts, ending a practice that has gained national attention.
The decision comes about a year after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began detaining migrants in the hallways of courthouses across the country, sometimes moments before they could defend themselves, CNN reported. The move raised alarm among lawyers and advocates, who noted that the practice was turning immigration courts from places of due process into places of fear and punishment for those who followed the rules.
What did the court say?
Tuesday’s ruling marked a major setback for the Trump administration, which has rolled back longstanding guidelines that placed restrictions on immigration enforcement actions at or near courthouses. In a 71-page ruling, federal judge P. Casey Pitts acknowledged the “chilling effect” of ICE’s arrest policy in immigration courts and found it “arbitrary and arbitrary.”
Pitts said, “For the avoidance of doubt, simply extending the 2025 Courthouse Arrest Policy to immigration courthouses would not cure the Policy’s fatal flaws. As the Court has previously detailed, the Policy does not fully address the chilling effect of courthouse arrests on alien participation in court hearings, which is both a critical factor underlying the ICE1 and 20 problem in its own right.”
This is a developing story. Further details were awaited.
