DOJ Used ICE Memo To Justify Immigration Court Arrests

For possibly the first time since President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda began, the Trump administration is being made to explain why immigration agents are showing up at people’s immigration court hearings to make arrests.

As usual, the explanation is that the administration is comprised of a gaggle of xenophobic idiots, who are just making it all up as they go along.

According to NBC News, plaintiffs with multiple immigrant rights groups sued the Trump administration over tactics of arresting immigrants at mandated court hearings, and while the presiding judge recently ruled against them, prosecutors with the Department of Justice have admitted to the court that they persuaded him to do so with incomplete or inaccurate information — on accident, of course.

Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that they had used a memo that was sent out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, titled “2025 ICE Guidance,” to defend the Trump administration’s deployment of ICE agents at courthouses, which has led to numerous arrests of immigrants who had shown up to their hearings, as they were legally obligated to do.

Prosecutors didn’t explain why they were included in an emailed memo sent to ICE, but they did cop to their failure to look deeper into it, and realized there was a provision limiting ICE’s ability to make arrests at courthouses to certain situations, and that the memo “does not and has never applied to civil immigration enforcement actions in or near” immigration courts, as the DOJ said in the court filing.

From NBC:

The government said in its filing that it became aware of the mistake Tuesday when it received an email that was sent to ICE personnel as a “reminder that the May 27, 2025, Guidance does not apply to Executive Office for Immigration Review (Immigration) courts, regardless of their location.”

Prosecutors did not say why they also received the ICE email.

Prosecutors said they informed the immigration rights groups that brought the case about the mistake.

The U.S. district judge presiding over the case, Kevin Castel, had rejected the groups’ request to block the administration’s courthouse arrests. In the ruling, Castel said ICE’s guidance “allowed arrests at or near an immigration court.”

In its filing Tuesday, the Justice Department repeatedly apologized to Castel for a “material mistaken statement of fact that the Government made to the Court and Plaintiffs” when it argued on behalf of the immigration agency.

“Based on our discussions with ICE today, this regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error,” prosecutors wrote.

I mean, look, we can all pretend this was just some unfortunate accident that upended people’s lives and deprived them of their rights, but this is the same administration that has made a habit out of claiming it’s going after the “worst of the worst” while arresting mostly non-criminals and proceeding to call them “criminal illegal aliens” anyway. And this is the president who multiple judges have had to block from targeting documented immigrants with reviews — such as Temporary Protected Status reviews — that only serve as fishing expeditions for reasons to remove them.

“It is yet again another example of ICE’s brazen disregard for the lives of immigrants in this country,” Amy Belsher, a New York Civil Liberties Union attorney for the plaintiffs, said. “It is now clearer than ever that there is no justification for ambushing and arresting people who are showing up to court.”

DOJ prosecutors acknowledged that the court’s previous ruling “will need to be reconsidered and re-briefed for the Court to adjudicate Plaintiffs’ APA [Administrative Procedure Act] claims against ICE on the merits,” but, according to NBC, as of Wednesday night, Judge Castel had not responded to the new filing.

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