Trump's ICE Arrested Asylum-Seekers Leaving Court and Allowed 72 Hours in Rooms Where Beds Are Banned

Trump's Orders Became Arrest and Detention Policies

Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, an asylum-seeker from Guatemala, went to a routine hearing at the San Francisco immigration court. ICE arrested her as she left and held her at its office at 630 Sansome Street.¹ Her complaint says she had attended every hearing and check-in, had no criminal history and worked lawfully in a bakery.²

Her arrest followed a change in policy: ICE removed its protections for people attending immigration court, and it expanded detention in short-term holding rooms from 12 hours to 72 while keeping its prohibition on beds.¹ Going to court became a route into custody.¹ On June 23, 2026, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts vacated the courthouse-arrest policies and the nationwide detention waiver as arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act, the law requiring agencies to give reasoned explanations for their decisions.¹

The tie to President Donald Trump is his orders.³⁴ His January 20, 2025 Executive Order 14159 made it national policy to achieve "the total and efficient enforcement" of immigration law against all inadmissible and removable noncitizens.³ A second order that day told the Secretary of Homeland Security to detain people apprehended for immigration violations "to the fullest extent permitted by law."⁴ Pitts traced ICE's reversal of courthouse protections to the first order; ICE issued its interim policy the next day.¹ Trump directed the broader crackdown. ICE and the Justice Department's immigration-court office removed their courthouse restrictions; ICE also extended hold-room confinement.³⁴¹

ICE Removed the Old Rules Without Replacing Them

ICE's 2021 guidance expressly protected immigration courts, limiting arrests there to national-security threats, imminent violence, hot pursuit and other defined circumstances.¹ In 2023, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which runs immigration courts, adopted those limits wherever court business took place, citing hearing attendance, safety and access to justice.¹

Both agencies removed those protections in January 2025, and ICE's final policy in May kept the repeal.¹ In March 2026, ICE told government lawyers that its replacement rules had never covered immigration courts, reversing what it had said for more than a year.¹ The repeal had left agents without internal arrest limits at immigration courthouses.¹

Pitts found that the reversal reflected "a complete lack of decisionmaking": ICE had not even acknowledged that it was removing the immigration-court protections.¹

Three Asylum-Seekers Show What the Policies Did

ICE also arrested asylum-seeker Ligia Garcia as she left a San Francisco immigration hearing.¹ Agents tried to arrest a third asylum-seeker, Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio, but refrained because her nursing infant was with her; the government later conceded she would likely be arrested at her next appearance.¹ Pitts ordered Pablo Sequen and Garcia released and barred the government from re-arresting any of the three without first demonstrating a valid detention basis to an immigration judge.¹

Trump's stated goal was total and efficient enforcement of immigration law.³ The policies did produce more arrests: Pitts cited expert Graeme Blair's analysis of immigration-court data showing weekly courthouse arrests in ICE's San Francisco enforcement region rising from very few before 2025 to nearly 50 afterward.¹ But former immigration judge Shira Levine testified that she saw a dramatic decline in attendance in her courtroom after arrests increased.¹ Pitts explained that ensuring attendance is a central goal of immigration law, including for people whose claims ultimately fail.¹ More arrests came with evidence of damage to the hearings the system needed people to attend.¹

Pitts described the choice these policies imposed as "two irreparable harms": appear in immigration court and risk likely arrest and detention, or fail to appear and irrevocably lose the opportunity to pursue asylum or other relief from removal.⁵

ICE Extended Confinement but Kept the Ban on Beds

On June 24, 2025, ICE custody official Monica Burke issued a one-year nationwide waiver permitting detention in holding rooms for up to 72 hours, or longer in exceptional circumstances.¹ ICE previously required individual waiver requests to justify longer confinement without diminishing detainee care and to address alternatives. In March 2025, however, it also authorized holds of up to 48 hours without a formal waiver, provided the practice at that field office did not exceed 30 days.¹

ICE left its other hold-room requirements in force, including its prohibition on sleeping equipment, a rule Pitts reproduced from ICE's detention standards:¹

Hold-room standard reproduced in Judge Pitts's June 23, 2026 order, page 64¹

sleeping apparatus are not permitted inside hold rooms

People spent days there. Pitts cited declarations from Jorge Willy Valera Chuquillanqui and Ismael David Caicedo Ruiz describing three-day stays at 630 Sansome.¹ The cells had metal benches and no permanent beds; declarations described consistently inadequate sleeping conditions, sanitation, hygiene, medical care and access to lawyers.¹

The waiver left in place another ICE standard forbidding hold-room detention beyond 12 hours, which Pitts found directly contradicted the 72-hour allowance.¹

Pitts held that depriving civil immigration detainees held overnight of basic sleeping needs is presumptively punitive.¹ He found that ICE failed to consider its constitutional duty to avoid punitive conditions or whether the deprivation served a legitimate government objective.¹ He vacated the waiver under the Administrative Procedure Act, without deciding whether it necessarily produced unconstitutional confinement.¹

The wider detention expansion is addressed in Detention With Weakened Safeguards.³¹

The Government's Best Defense Failed to Save the Policies

The government's strongest defense was that ICE has broad arrest authority, courthouse operations can improve safety and enforcement, and detention space was strained by increased arrests and Trump's restrictions on releasing people.¹ EOIR added that people with valid immigration claims had no reason to fear arrest, and that it lacked authority to prohibit ICE from conducting lawful enforcement.¹

Pitts accepted that ICE's reading of Trump's restriction on discretionary release was rational.¹ He accepted EOIR's explanations on safety risks and on the public distinction between the court office and DHS, and rejected the plaintiffs' challenges on both points.¹ He had also denied their initial request to suspend the detention waiver while granting protections against unconstitutional detention conditions.¹

But a valid claim did not exempt anyone from arrest, and people could lose their liberty while waiting for a judge to decide that claim.¹ Pitts found that EOIR had not rationally addressed the deterrent effect on attendance, and that ICE had not considered arresting fewer people until it had adequate detention space.¹ He vacated the policies in full.¹

In its September opening brief, the government argued that the internal memos left arrest decisions to individual officers and were beyond court review, accused Pitts of substituting his judgment for the agencies', and said relief should cover the regional classes rather than cancel the policies nationwide.⁶ Pitts had held in June that removing the protections was itself a policy decision subject to court review, even though officers still had discretion over individual arrests.¹ He rejected the government's argument that the Supreme Court's Trump v. CASA ruling barred canceling the policies nationwide: CASA limited nationwide injunctions but expressly left open whether courts could cancel agency policies nationwide.¹

The ruling restored the earlier courthouse rules, which still permitted arrests in defined circumstances, and individual applications for longer hold-room detention remained available.¹ On July 10, Pitts denied the government's request to pause his judgment: after more than six months of regional courthouse-policy suspension, it had produced no concrete evidence of enforcement harm.⁵

The Appeal and the Claims About Detention Conditions

Two things were undecided on the public dockets. First, the appeal: Pitts entered final judgment on the policy claims on June 30, 2026, the government appealed, and the plaintiffs' response is due November 16.⁷⁸ Second, conditions at 630 Sansome: those claims continued after the judgment, and on October 1 the plaintiffs asked Pitts to enforce the November 2025 detention-conditions injunction, alleging failures in medical screening, medication access, hygiene supplies and notice of rights.⁷⁹ Plaintiffs alleged more than nine months of noncompliance.⁹ Their accompanying memorandum said there was no medical professional onsite and reported that detainees had been ignored by nurses after vomiting blood or while visibly bleeding after arrest.¹⁰ These remained allegations in support of the enforcement motion.

After Pitts denied a stay on July 10, the government sought one from the Ninth Circuit. The captured appellate docket shows no ruling on that request or on the merits through September 21, 2026; the captured district docket shows no ruling on the October enforcement motion through October 8, 2026.⁸¹¹

The Charge Is Removing Safeguards to Expand Custody

Trump ordered expanded immigration enforcement and detention. His agencies answered by removing courthouse protections; ICE authorized three days in holding rooms while retaining a ban on beds.³⁴¹ They arrested people who came to pursue their cases. ICE lengthened confinement without considering how to provide humane custody, or whether fewer arrests could prevent the shortage of detention space.¹

That is the abuse of public power: making court attendance a route into custody while discarding safeguards for the people taken.¹ It cost named asylum-seekers their liberty, came with evidence of deterred hearing attendance and prolonged detention in rooms without beds.¹ Pitts found the policies unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act and vacated them nationwide.¹ The agencies that failed to justify those consequences were carrying out Trump's orders.³¹