How have appeals courts or the Supreme Court ruled on lower‑court injunctions against ICE courthouse arrests since 2024?
Executive summary
Federal district judges in multiple jurisdictions have issued injunctions pausing or restricting ICE courthouse arrests since 2024, but appellate courts have so far produced a mixed response: some appellate rulings have narrowed lower‑court relief and preserved enforcement while others have allowed injunctions to stand pending appeal, and the Supreme Court has not yet decided the substantive legality of courthouse arrests — only recently limited the scope of nationwide injunctions, a constraint lower courts are grappling with in these cases [1] [2] [3].
1. The district‑court wave: injunctions that paused courthouse arrests
Beginning in 2024 and into 2025, several federal district judges granted injunctions or other relief blocking ICE from arresting people at or around courthouses—most prominently a Northern California judge who barred sweeping ICE courthouse arrests and explicitly found due‑process harms, and a San Francisco judge who limited arrests in his court’s jurisdiction while noting the possibility of broader relief later in the litigation [2] [1] [4].
2. Appellate courts: narrowing relief and limiting releases
When these district orders reached the courts of appeals, panels have not uniformly upheld broad district‑court remedies; for example, a federal appeals court narrowed rules governing “warrantless” arrests and rejected wholesale releases that a lower court had ordered, thereby preserving many detentions even as it sustained some limits on ICE practices — an outcome that illustrates appellate willingness to constrain sweeping district remedies while policing ICE conduct [3].
3. Contradictory district rulings create a likely circuit split
Different district judges have reached opposite conclusions: a Manhattan judge sided with the government and greenlit arrests outside immigration courthouses in a case brought by immigrant‑rights groups, while judges in Northern California and elsewhere have blocked the practice and flagged constitutional concerns — an inconsistency that the press and legal observers say could produce a circuit split and make Supreme Court review likely if appeals continue [5] [2].
4. The Supreme Court’s role to date: procedural limits, not a merits decision
The nation’s high court has not yet ruled on the central constitutional question of whether ICE can make civil arrests at courthouses; what it has done is constrain district judges’ power to issue broad, nationwide injunctions, a procedural change that directly influenced how Judge Pitts framed his Northern California order by confining its geographic reach to the San Francisco Area of Responsibility [1]. That procedural ruling leaves open whether the Supreme Court would treat courthouse‑arrest bans differently on the merits — a question the court has not answered [1] [2].
5. Government responses and expected appeals: relentless litigation posture
The Biden‑era restrictions earlier reversed under the second Trump administration and the Justice Department and DHS have signaled or pursued appeals in multiple cases, framing the issue as law‑enforcement prerogative and national immigration control; courts have repeatedly noted government appeals or stated the administration’s intent to seek appellate review, making the injunctions temporary battlegrounds rather than final conclusions [2] [4] [6].
6. Stakes, agendas and what to watch next
The practical stakes are high — injunctions have been tied to dramatic drops in court appearances and spikes in in‑absentia removals according to reporting, while state and local courts complain about access to justice; advocates emphasize due‑process and chilling of court access, whereas the government emphasizes enforcement efficiency and public‑safety prerogatives, and appeals courts will have to balance those competing agendas amid the Supreme Court’s new limits on nationwide relief and the prospect of a circuit split that could bring this issue to the high court in 2026 [2] [7] [8].