California Sues ICE Over Arrests at State Courthouses, Saying They Continued After a Judge Voided the Policy

California has sued ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to stop civil immigration arrests in and around its state courthouses, the places where defendants answer charges, victims seek protective orders and witnesses testify. The complaint, filed Oct. 15 in federal court in Los Angeles, says the arrests continued even after a federal judge in San Francisco set aside the ICE courthouse policies in June, which is why the state is now attacking the practice itself rather than a single memo.

The case is Attorney General Rob Bonta’s 100th lawsuit against the Trump administration. According to his office, average monthly ICE courthouse arrests in and around California rose more than 550 percent in the year after ICE changed its courthouse rules in late May 2025. The office counted 34 enforcement incidents at superior courts in June 2026, ending in 30 civil arrests, and 28 incidents with 28 arrests in July, the first full month after the policies were vacated. Those are the state’s own figures and have not been tested in court. Bonta says some serious criminal charges have been dropped because victims and witnesses stopped showing up.

A vacated policy is not a ban on arrests

The June ruling came in Pablo Sequen v. Albarran, a case over arrests at immigration court hearings. U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts found ICE Policies 11072.3 and 11072.4 and a companion immigration court memo arbitrary under the Administrative Procedure Act, set them aside in a June 23 ruling, entered final judgment on June 30, and on July 10 refused to pause his judgment while the government appeals, calling vacatur “the default remedy under the APA.”

Vacating a policy removes the written authorization, but it does not take away ICE’s general statutory power to arrest people it believes are removable. That is the gap California is targeting. According to the attorney general’s office, ICE’s most recent written directive places no limit on who can be arrested at a courthouse, and officers, often in plain clothes, have kept making arrests in Los Angeles and San Diego as well as rural Shasta, Butte and Glenn counties.

Four legal theories, with uneven track records

The state raises four claims: that the arrests are arbitrary and capricious under the APA, that they exceed ICE’s authority, that they violate a constitutional right or privilege, and that they invade powers the Tenth Amendment reserves to the states. They are not equally strong.

The APA claim has the best record. It won in Pablo Sequen, and California makes the same argument: ICE dropped earlier limits without explaining why or weighing the chilling effect on people who must appear in court.

The statutory claim faces a precedent. California says the Immigration and Nationality Act quietly absorbed the centuries-old common-law privilege that protects parties and witnesses from civil arrest while going to, attending and leaving court. In 2020, in Ryan v. ICE, the First Circuit rejected that reading at the preliminary injunction stage, though it left open whether a state’s own privilege and its power to run its courts could limit ICE. That ruling does not bind courts in California, and the Tenth Amendment claim looks designed to occupy the ground the First Circuit left open.

The administration’s case for courthouse arrests has been consistent since 2018. ICE’s first written courthouse directive said the arrests were “necessitated by the unwillingness of some jurisdictions to cooperate with ICE,” and that courthouse screening for weapons lowers the risk to officers and the public, NPR reported at the time. California’s sanctuary law, which limits how much its jails help ICE, is exactly the kind of policy that argument has in mind, and the government is likely to say the state created the problem it is now suing over.

Why the state is leaning on federal law, not its own

California has its own statute coming. SB 873, signed Sept. 29 and effective Jan. 1, 2027, requires federal immigration agents to present a judicial warrant and identify themselves before making certain civil arrests within 1,000 feet of a California courthouse. But this week the Ninth Circuit held that California cannot make federal agents show names or badge numbers, because a state may not directly regulate how the federal government does its work. A warrant requirement aimed at federal officers invites the same objection. A suit claiming ICE broke federal law sidesteps that problem.

Nothing changes at California courthouses yet. Filing a complaint does not stop arrests; that would take a preliminary injunction or a final ruling, and the state’s announcement did not say whether it will seek emergency relief. Meanwhile, the government’s appeal in Pablo Sequen is pending in the Ninth Circuit, and a ruling there on whether ICE adequately explained its courthouse policies would shape this case as much as anything argued in Los Angeles.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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