By Mike Spector
NEW YORK, June 23 (Reuters) – A federal judge in California vacated the Trump administration’s nationwide policies expanding arrests at immigration courthouses and the duration for detaining noncitizens in short-term facilities, finding the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and another government arm “arbitrary and capricious.”
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California on Tuesday vacated ICE’s policies that had rescinded previous strictures on arrests at immigration courthouses and allowed detainees to be held in short-term cells for up to 72 hours. He did the same for a similar policy undertaken by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review that removed limits on courthouse arrests.
The 71-page ruling, issued in a case brought by an asylum seeker arrested upon departing a routine hearing at a San Francisco immigration court, struck down key parts of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. Judge Pitts, appointed by former U.S. President Joe Biden, effectively reinstated Biden-era policies that limited arrests at immigration courthouses to narrow circumstances and capped detentions in short-term facilities to 12 hours.
Since U.S. President Donald Trump retook office in January of last year, his administration has ramped up arrests of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally as part of an aggressive deportation push.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival criticized the ruling on X, calling it “naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda.”
Previous guidance limited arrests at courthouses to circumstances such as national security threats, imminent danger and “hot pursuit” of someone posing a public safety risk, the ruling said. The judge found that the Trump administration failed to provide “reasoned explanations” for rescinding previous policies as required under the Administrative Procedure Act.
“For 80 years, Congress has commanded federal agencies to think before they act,” the judge wrote in his ruling, adding that the law requires “an agency at least provide sound reasons for following its chosen course.”
(Reporting by Mike Spector; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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