Posted on 05/19/2026 9:07:20 AM PDT by Red Badger
A federal judge in New York has blocked ICE agents from making most arrests at three Manhattan immigration court locations, forcing President Trump’s administration back into the narrow Biden-era restrictions that treated courthouses like sanctuary zones.
The ruling covers 26 Federal Plaza, 201 Varick Street, and 290 Broadway in Manhattan.
A federal judge tied the Trump administration's hands on ICE arrests at Manhattan immigration courts after government lawyers admitted making a 'material mistaken statement of fact' defending the policy. ICE must now revert to Biden-era restrictions on courthouse enforcement… pic.twitter.com/VeKj45p2sr— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) May 19, 2026
Under the order, ICE can only make arrests in limited circumstances, such as when someone poses a serious public safety threat or there is an imminent risk of flight that cannot be addressed any other way.
In other words, illegal aliens who show up to their own immigration hearings are now largely shielded from the very enforcement system those hearings exist to serve.
The judge’s ruling came after government lawyers reportedly made a material misstatement of fact during proceedings. The error gave the court an opening to impose the injunction.
The administration’s lawyers handed the court an opening by relying on the wrong memo.
The bigger problem is what happened next: the court used that opening to put a major enforcement tool back under Biden-era limits.
Fox News reported the immediate impact of the ruling:
ICE civil immigration arrests at the three Manhattan immigration court locations are temporarily blocked while the broader lawsuit continues.
The ruling came after government lawyers acknowledged they had made a material mistaken statement of fact while defending the policy.
That legal error gave U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel room to revisit the courthouse-arrest fight and put the old restrictions back in place for now.
Practically, the ruling means ICE must revert to narrower Biden-era courthouse enforcement limits in these Manhattan immigration court settings. That is a major operational change because the administration had been using court appearances as predictable moments to locate people already inside the removal process.
The plaintiffs argued that the policy turned mandatory immigration hearings into arrest operations. The administration’s problem now is that a process mistake in court has handed the left exactly the kind of enforcement limit it wanted.
That matters because these are not random street stops. These are federal immigration court locations where the government already knows who is appearing, why they are appearing, and what stage of the removal process they are in.
DHS has made the common-sense argument clear: nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them.
Officials have expressed confidence they will ultimately be vindicated on the legal merits.
The Epoch Times described the limits placed on ICE:
The May 18 ruling bars federal agents from conducting arrests at three Manhattan immigration courts except in limited circumstances.
The case came from a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union and other groups on behalf of The Door and African Communities Together. Those groups challenged ICE policies that allow federal agents to arrest people in immigration courts.
The judge said ICE agents may make immigration-court arrests only when there are serious threats of physical harm to public safety or similar urgent conditions.
That is a very different standard from ordinary enforcement at a location where federal authorities already know a person is scheduled to appear.
The ruling puts the government in the absurd position of knowing exactly where removable aliens will be at a specific time and being told it cannot act on that information unless the court-approved emergency box is checked.
Think about what this actually means in practice.
Someone enters the country illegally. They are placed into removal proceedings.
They are ordered to appear at an immigration court at a specific address on a specific date.
And now a federal judge says the government cannot arrest them there.
Documented NY reported the local scope and the DHS response:
The order applies to 26 Federal Plaza and two other Manhattan immigration courts, and it follows the government’s admission that a May 2025 guidance memo had been incorrectly used to justify immigration-court arrests.
Under the order, ICE may make arrests at those court locations only under certain enumerated circumstances, including imminent risk of death, violence, or physical harm. In ordinary cases, agents are now blocked from using the courthouse appearance itself as the enforcement point.
Documented NY also reported that an unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesperson defended the arrests as commonsense. The DHS position was straightforward: nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them, and the department believes it will ultimately be vindicated.
That statement is the core of the fight. The Trump administration sees a courthouse appearance as an obvious moment to enforce the law; the left sees it as a place where enforcement should be pushed back.
The left frames this as protecting “access to justice.” The argument is that if people fear arrest at court, they will skip their hearings entirely.
But that logic rewards noncompliance. It says the system should accommodate the possibility that someone might flee rather than simply enforcing the law against people who are already in the legal pipeline.
President Trump’s administration has been clear from day one that immigration enforcement means removing people who are in the country illegally, including those cycling through an overburdened court system that takes years to resolve cases.
Courthouse arrests are not random raids. They target people the government already knows are removable or have pending cases.
The legal error that gave this judge his opening is frustrating, and the administration’s lawyers need to tighten up their process.
But one mistaken statement should not become the foundation for gutting enforcement at three of the busiest immigration court sites in America.
If showing up to immigration court makes someone removable, that should be the moment the law actually works.
Not the moment enforcement backs off because a federal judge decided the courthouse door is a finish line for illegal aliens instead of a checkpoint.
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Ignore him.
L
Jail him. He has no authority to do this.
yep, ignore him and if he tries to stop the arrests, then arrest him like they did that other judge which has now been convicted.
No can do.
Trump can pardon anyone of a federal crime. Simple shoot the finger at the judge and if he holds someone in contempt, then simply pardon them and continue arresting the aliens.
Of course it’s a Bush appointed (no doubt at the recommendation/approval of the New York senators) judge. This will be overturned on appeal.
Where in the Constitution does it say that Federal judges get to make law?..........
Error or a created opportunity?
This judge is essentially preventing the federal agents from enforcing the laws...............
They see it as filling a void. Judges sit atop the Mountain of Respectability. Therefore...
The Constitution doesn’t explicitly state what the judges duties are. Over the course of 250 years they have just made stuff up as they go along and everybody accepts it.
Their job essentially is to interpret the laws passed by Congress and signed into law by presidents, not to make rules that don’t exist within the laws.
Enforcement-free zones around immigration courts? Why stop there? Make the whole district and enforcement-free zone?
See, when you magnify the order to it maximum logical extent it becomes ludicrous. therfore it started out ludicrous from its inception...........
I never thought that we would have at least a third of our federal judges fighting against the sovereignty of our nation. We have foreign nationals with more rights than Americans themselves.
The only way to legally remove a federal judge is by impeachment, a slow and difficult process.
We need to have term limits for federal judges, mandatory retirement age of 80, not lifetime appointments. Average lifespan of a male in 1776 was 65-70 years old. They didn’t conceive of people living to their 90s and still being judges...........
Arrest the judge for obstruction.
If the military and police forces impose mandatory age limits, so should the political class. Just look at Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, people who should have been retired at least a decade ago.
Didnt the Supreme Court rule on this recently?
This judge is pretending his or her authority over courtroom decorum extends over the entire building and adjacent grounds and is obviously intended to obstruct enforcement of immigration law.
The judge is a criminal.
Another unelected executive.
The judge’s ruling came after government lawyers reportedly made a material misstatement of fact during proceedings. The error gave the court an opening to impose the injunction.The administration’s lawyers handed the court an opening by relying on the wrong memo.
[...]
The ruling came after government lawyers acknowledged they had made a material mistaken statement of fact while defending the policy.
That legal error gave U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel room to revisit the courthouse-arrest fight and put the old restrictions back in place for now.
[...]
The judge said ICE agents may make immigration-court arrests only when there are serious threats of physical harm to public safety or similar urgent conditions.
That is a very different standard from ordinary enforcement at a location where federal authorities already know a person is scheduled to appear.
The ruling puts the government in the absurd position of knowing exactly where removable aliens will be at a specific time and being told it cannot act on that information unless the court-approved emergency box is checked.
[...]
The order applies to 26 Federal Plaza and two other Manhattan immigration courts, and it follows the government’s admission that a May 2025 guidance memo had been incorrectly used to justify immigration-court arrests.
[...]
The legal error that gave this judge his opening is frustrating, and the administration’s lawyers need to tighten up their process.
But one mistaken statement should not become the foundation for gutting enforcement at three of the busiest immigration court sites in America.
ICE repeatedly violated the law to criminally effect arrests at a courthouse without a judicial warrant. In order to keep performing unlawful criminal arrests without the required warrant, ICE officials repeatedly lied to the Court about a May 2025 ICE Guidance Memo. The false statements were finally admitted and ICE was ordered to cease and desist with its unlawful and criminal arrests without the required warrant.
As for being put in a ridiculous position, as claimed, all law enforcement is subject to compliance with the 4th Amendment which states:
... no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
What the ruling actually does
U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel issued an order barring federal immigration agents from arresting people in or around three Manhattan buildings where immigration proceedings take place unless there is a serious, exceptional public-safety threat.
This halts a practice—expanded under the Trump administration—where ICE agents detained individuals as they arrived for immigration hearings.
The three affected Manhattan locations
According to reporting, the order applies to 26 Federal Plaza and two other Manhattan immigration court buildings where hearings are held.
Why the judge issued the order
ICE had been arresting people attending required immigration hearings.
The court found that these arrests were not justified under the guidance ICE claimed to rely on.
What this does not mean
These are not “sanctuary zones” or “enforcement-free zones.”
ICE can still make arrests away from the courthouses or when there is a serious public-safety threat.
The “material mistaken statement of fact” that government lawyers admitted to centers on ICE’s claimed authority to arrest people inside immigration courthouses. Multiple news sources describe the same core error:
What the government falsely claimed
Government lawyers repeatedly told Judge P. Kevin Castel that a May 2025 ICE guidance memo authorized ICE officers to make arrests inside immigration court buildings.
But in March 2026, the Department of Justice admitted this was false:
The memo “does not and has never applied” to immigration court arrests.
This means the government had been defending ICE’s courthouse-arrest policy for months based on a memo that never actually granted the authority they said it did.
- - - - -
Arrests were with Administrative warrants, not Judicial warrants
Why this mattered in Judge Castel’s ruling
Judge P. Kevin Castel emphasized that:
ICE’s administrative warrants do not authorize arrests inside or immediately around courtrooms
The government had incorrectly claimed that an internal memo gave ICE that authority
When DOJ later admitted that claim was a “material mistaken statement of fact,” the judge sharply limited ICE’s courthouse arrests
Because administrative warrants lack judicial oversight, the judge found that ICE’s courthouse arrests were not legally justified under the policy the government had cited.
Castel said in a written decision that while there was “a strong governmental interest in enforcing immigration laws,” there also was a serious interest in letting individuals attend removal proceedings and pursue asylum claims before a judge “without fear of arrest.”He noted that federal agents still can detain individuals at locations away from immigration courts and also can make arrests at immigration courthouses when there are serious threats to public safety.
He said the boundaries set out in federal policy five years ago can remain in effect, but a court case before him was likely to result in a finding that a withdrawal of that policy after President Donald Trump took office was “arbitrary and capricious.”
Castel also noted that government lawyers recently reversed their position, saying they've learned that 2025 policies regarding arrests in and around courthouses set by the Trump administration did not apply to immigration courts after all.
The judge, who last year had declined to ban the practice, said the new position by government lawyers meant it was necessary to “correct a clear error and prevent a manifest injustice.”
https://floridianpress.com/2026/05/federal-judge-bans-ice-arrests-in-manhattan-immigration-courts/
According to NBC News, Castel wrote in his 15-page order that although there was “a strong governmental interest in enforcing immigration laws,” there also was a serious interest in letting individuals attend removal proceedings and pursue asylum claims before a judge “without fear of arrest.”Castel affirmed that officers can still arrest individuals at locations away from the courts and at immigration courthouses, only if there are serious threats to public safety.
Judge Castel affirmed that boundaries regarding enforcement operations inside courthouses can remain in effect, citing an April 2021 federal policy, while assuring that a court case before him would most likely result in a ruling that it was “arbitrary and capricious” for the second Trump administration to withdraw that policy.
https://documentedny.com/2026/05/18/ice-ordered-to-halt-arrests-at-manhattan-immigration-courts/
Their original case had been deemed unlikely to succeed by judge Castel, until DOJ attorneys suddenly submitted in March what Castel at the time called an “extraordinary letter,” which stated that government attorneys had misinterpreted the memo that underpinned its argument supporting arrests at immigration courts.
https://documentedny.com/2026/03/26/ice-memo-error-immigration-court-arrests/
In a surprising reversal, Trump administration lawyers admitted this week that they had incorrectly used an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo to justify arrests at immigration courts like 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan.The acknowledgement was made in court filings in an ongoing lawsuit brought by civil rights groups challenging the controversial arrests of immigrants who were showing up for routine court appearances.
In a letter to Judge Kevin Castel, an attorney with the Southern District of New York made the admission that the government has repeatedly misrepresented the May 2025 ICE memo in its legal defense of the arrests.
https://www.aol.com/news/judge-blocks-ice-arrests-immigration-143520769.html
In a letter to a federal judge in March, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan repeatedly expressed “regret” that his office mistakenly defended a memo that “does not and has never applied” to immigration court arrests.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/doj-false-statements-ice-arrests-1788483
The US Department of Justice has admitted to a federal judge in Manhattan that it presented false statements about ICE's authority to arrest immigrants at their own immigration court hearings, a misrepresentation the government now concedes was woven through multiple court briefs and at least one oral argument over the course of nearly seven months.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.