A federal judge in San Francisco has extended a nationwide ban on ICE arrests at courthouses and multi-day detention in short-term holding cells — a ruling driven by a class-action lawsuit brought by Bay Area civil rights attorneys.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California strips away two Trump administration policy changes that had reversed years of practice protecting immigrants seeking their day in court. It is a victory rooted in San Francisco's own legal community, and it arrives as the Trump administration has simultaneously dismantled SF's immigration court system — leaving the Bay Area with the rare distinction of having birthed both one of the country's most significant pro-immigrant rulings and one of its most stripped-down immigration court systems.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement can no longer arrest immigrants at courthouse hearings or hold them beyond 12 hours in short-term detention cells anywhere in the United States, a federal judge ruled last Tuesday — and the legal muscle behind the ruling came from San Francisco.

U.S. District Court Judge Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California issued the order June 24, expanding a temporary injunction he had imposed in December that had applied only to Northern California. The new ruling is nationwide in scope.

The case was brought by attorneys at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, a 50-year-old civil rights organization headquartered on Steuart Street in the city. The lawsuit targeted two specific policy reversals made by the Trump administration in 2025.

From local crackdown to nationwide policy — and back

In January 2025, ICE and the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review reversed years of policy that had discouraged courthouse arrests, issuing new guidance that agents could carry out "civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses" whenever they believed a non-citizen would be present — regardless of whether the person posed any public safety threat. Then, in June 2025, ICE told field offices across the country that they could hold detained immigrants in short-term cells for up to three days or longer in "exceptional circumstances," abandoning a longstanding 12-hour limit.

The effects played out in real time. Dramatic arrests of immigrants during routine hearings were captured on video at New York's 26 Federal Plaza and elsewhere. In San Francisco, protesters clashed with federal agents outside the main immigration court in December 2025, resulting in hundreds of arrests.

In court, Judge Pitts found that ICE provided no adequate legal reasoning for either reversal — a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act's requirement that federal agencies justify their policy changes. He declared both decisions "arbitrary and capricious" and banned them both.

Nisha Kashyap, an attorney at the Lawyers' Committee, noted the practice had largely stopped in San Francisco since October 2025 but continued in other parts of the country, including New York and Texas, where the ruling will now apply.

A Bay Area win with national reach

Jordan Wells, a senior attorney at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, framed the decision in stark terms.

"The courthouse is meant to be a refuge for the pursuit of justice, not a hunting ground for ICE," Wells said in a statement following the ruling. "No one, immigrants included, should be forced to choose between their liberty and their day in court."

The ruling lands in an ironic moment for Bay Area immigration law. While a Northern California judge is now protecting immigrants in courthouses nationwide, the Trump administration has simultaneously gutted SF's own immigration court system. The city's last functioning immigration court was reduced to a satellite operation this spring after a wave of judge firings, retirements, and resignations cut the bench from 21 judges to two — displacing more than 117,000 pending cases with no local venue for hearings.

That court collapse means fewer immigrants in the Bay Area will even have hearings to show up to. Judge Pitts' ruling protects those who do.

What comes next

The ruling does not prevent ICE from arresting immigrants it encounters outside of courthouses through other means, or from detaining people in long-term facilities. It specifically bars the use of courthouse appearances — events where the government itself summons immigrants to appear — as opportunities for civil enforcement. It also re-imposes the 12-hour limit on short-term holding cells, preventing the practice of using temporary jails as de facto detention centers for days at a time.

The Trump administration has not yet said whether it will appeal. Historically, the administration has appealed similar immigration injunctions to the Ninth Circuit and, where possible, to the Supreme Court.