DOJ Admits It Misled Federal Court With Faulty ICE Memo on Immigration Courthouse Arrests

The Department of Justice acknowledged this week that it presented erroneous information to a federal judge for over a year to defend the controversial practice of arresting immigrants at their own immigration court hearings — an admission that could fundamentally reshape a high-profile legal challenge to the tactic.
In a letter filed Tuesday with U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York disclosed that a May 2025 ICE memorandum the government had repeatedly cited as legal justification for courthouse arrests never actually applied to immigration courts. The memo only authorized enforcement actions at regular courthouses, not at the immigration courts run by the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.
The revelation is significant because Judge Castel relied in part on that same memo when he denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction last September. As NBC News reported, DOJ prosecutors acknowledged that the court’s September 12 opinion and order would now need to be reconsidered and re-briefed.
On Thursday, Judge Castel responded by ordering the Trump administration to preserve all records related to the case and the May 2025 memo, including internal communications between DOJ lawyers and ICE, according to The Hill.
DOJ prosecutors apologized to the court, calling the episode a regrettable error caused by an ICE agency attorney who provided a faulty interpretation of the memo’s scope. Prosecutors insisted, however, that the rest of their legal arguments still hold.
Immigrant rights advocates rejected that framing forcefully. Amy Belsher, the New York Civil Liberties Union’s director of immigrants’ rights litigation, called the government’s admission devastating in a public statement reported by The Hill. She said ICE had claimed for over a year that the 2025 memorandum authorized mass arrests at immigration courts, and that the court relied on that representation to deny relief to her clients.
“It is yet again another example of ICE’s brazen disregard for the lives of immigrants in this country,” Belsher said, as reported by The Hill. She added that the admission makes clear there was never any justification for what she described as ambushing people who showed up to court as required.
The lawsuit was originally filed last August by the New York City-based advocacy organizations African Communities Together and The Door, as NPR reported. The NYCLU represents the plaintiffs.
The arrests had become a flashpoint in immigration enforcement over the past year. ICE prosecutors would move to dismiss a person’s immigration case in court, only for agents waiting nearby to detain that same person as they left the courtroom, believing the government was no longer pursuing their removal. Attorneys for the plaintiffs described the pattern as turning mandatory court hearings into traps, according to The Hill.
Despite the DOJ’s concession, the Department of Homeland Security signaled no intention of halting the practice.
A DHS spokesperson told NPR that there is no change in policy and that the government would continue making arrests at immigration courts following proceedings.
The case, which centers on enforcement at Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza, now enters a new phase. With the government’s primary documentary justification withdrawn, the court will need to reassess the legality of the arrests on different grounds — a development that could have implications well beyond New York for the thousands of immigrants nationwide who have faced detention after appearing for court hearings in good faith.