Donald Trump’s administration has falsely stated for nearly a year that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers can arrest people inside immigration courts, where agents standing outside courtroom doors have swiftly cuffed thousands of immigrants immediately after they left their hearings.
The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan — which emerged as a major flashpoint for courthouse arrests over the last year — repeatedly expressed “regret” in a letter to a federal judge this week, saying that his office mistakenly defended an ICE memo that “does not and has never applied” to immigration court arrests.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton blamed ICE and the agency’s legal team, which “specifically informed” his office that a Trump-era memo “applied to immigration courthouse arrests,” according to Clayton.
“Based on our discussions with ICE today, this regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error,” Clayton wrote.
“This is genuinely a bombshell,” said former New York City comptroller Brad Lander, who was arrested by ICE agents while accompanying immigrants to their court hearings last year.
“All courthouse arrests should cease immediately,” he wrote. “There should be a Congressional investigation and civil rights actions for every illegal abduction of immigrants trying to follow the rules and appear in court.”
The May 2025 memo from ICE’s acting director Todd Lyons specifically notes that agents should operate “discreetly” if they are performing courthouse arrests but states that agents should “generally avoid” enforcement actions in courthouses “wholly dedicated to non-criminal proceedings.”
In a memo sent to all Enforcement and Removal officers on March 19 and revealed in court documents this week, ICE’s assistant director of field operations Liana Castano clarified that the agency’s arrest policy “does not apply” to immigration courts, “regardless of their location.”
Unlike federal district courts, immigration courts and judges operate under the Department of Justice at the direction of the attorney general.
Last year, DOJ ordered all immigration judges to dismiss immigrants’ cases when they show up for their court-mandated hearings — making them immediately vulnerable to arrest and removal before they’ve had a chance to appeal.
That policy sparked chaotic scenes of masked agents patrolling courthouse hallways and hauling away immigrants as they’re ripped from their families moments after walking through a courtroom’s doors, with critics blasting what they saw as an “ambush” that violated due process protections.
The documents were included in litigation stemming from a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s “sweeping, unprecedented campaign of targeting noncitizens at their immigration court proceedings” and “summarily arresting them as they exit.”
“The implications of this development are far-reaching,” according to attorneys for the New York advocacy groups who sued to stop the arrests.
In the months after a federal judge used the ICE memo to deny plaintiffs’ attempts to swiftly block the policy, ICE has continued to unlawfully arrest people leaving immigration court, often sending them to detention facilities “hundreds of miles away,” they wrote.
Last year, in a separate case, a federal judge ripped into the “arbitrary” practice of arresting immigrants as they leave their hearings, creating what the judge called a “game of detention roulette” that violates due process.
The Independent has requested comment from ICE.
