Federal Court Blocks Unlawful ICE Policy of Re-arresting Immigrants Without Legal Justification

SAN FRANCISCO—A federal district court in California has blocked the Trump administration’s policy of unlawfully re-arresting and re-detaining immigrants the government previously released from custody after concluding they were neither dangerous nor a flight risk.

U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts’ ruling in Garro Pinchi v. Noem applies throughout the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s San Francisco Area of Responsibility, which includes Northern and Central California, Hawaiʻi, Guam, and Saipan.

For decades, immigrants whom the government deemed safe to release were allowed to remain free while their immigration case proceeded if they complied with their supervision conditions. In May, ICE abruptly changed course and began unlawfully re-arresting people at courthouses and check-ins across Northern and Central California, despite having no reason to believe they are a danger to the community or likely to flee.

“While the extraordinary pace and scale of the change to DHS’s re-detention practices are clear, the reasons for it are not,” Judge Pitts wrote in his 67-page decision. “And when initially asked by courts to articulate a rationale for its re-arrest of noncitizens absent changed circumstances, DHS struggled to provide a consistent answer.”

Judge Pitts found that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claims that the government’s re-detention policy violates the Administrative Procedure Act. The court concluded that DHS sought to justify its actions after the fact using a legally flawed interpretation of the immigration detention statutes. The court further held that the policy threatens irreparable harm by subjecting class members to unlawful detention and deprivation of liberty.

The court order also provisionally certified the case as a class action.

“This ruling puts an immediate stop to a policy that upended lives by subjecting people to sudden re-detention after the government itself had determined they could safely remain free,” Erin Meyer, partner with Keker, Van Nest & Peters, said. “This order should have an immediate impact in our communities, allowing people to rely once again on the assurances they’ve received that they will not be re-detained as long as they are law-abiding and comply with all immigration court hearings and check-ins.”

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the federal class-action lawsuit seeks to end the administration’s new policy and prohibit ICE from unlawfully re-arresting and re-detaining people the government previously determined were neither dangerous nor a flight risk.

“Since May, ICE has embraced cruelty and sowed chaos, sweeping up people who did everything our immigration system asked of them,” said Bree Bernwanger, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “This decision is an important reminder that the government cannot arbitrarily rip people from their lives without reason or explanation.”

Over the past several months, Centro Legal de La Raza staff spent countless hours at ICE’s San Francisco Field Office meeting with people who had just been re-detained for showing up to their court hearings.

“They were children, elderly and disabled people, pregnant women, and grandparents. Many were in tears, shaking uncontrollably, unable to speak, and in shock,” said Nikolas De Bremaeker, Managing Attorney at Centro Legal de la Raza. “They had one thing in common: they did everything the government asked, and ICE arrested them anyway. Friday's ruling puts us one step closer to ending this nightmare.”

The ACLU Foundation, ACLU Foundation of Northern California, Centro Legal de la Raza, and Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP represent the three Bay Area plaintiffs.

Read the decision.