The DOJ Just Admitted ICE Was Arresting People at Courthouses Under the Wrong Rules

Here is something you don't see very often: the Department of Justice telling a federal judge, essentially, "Our bad." In a letter filed this week to U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan, DOJ lawyers admitted they had cited the wrong internal memo when defending ICE's practice of arresting immigrants at immigration courthouses. This wasn't a minor footnote error. It was the central legal justification the government had been using for months to arrest hundreds of people showing up for their own hearings.

Let that sink in. The government arrested people at court, told a judge it was perfectly authorized to do so, and then later admitted the document it was waving around didn't even apply.

The Memo That Didn't Apply

The memo in question was an ICE directive from May 2025 titled "Civil Immigration Enforcement Actions in or Near Courthouses." It sounds like exactly the kind of policy that would cover, well, arrests at courthouses. And it does cover most courthouses, like state and local ones.

But here's the catch: it explicitly does not apply to federal immigration courts. That's the specific type of courthouse where ICE has been grabbing people. The DOJ admitted in its filing that the memo "does not and has never applied to civil immigration enforcement actions in or near immigration courts." For months, the government had been telling Judge Castel the opposite.

The DOJ's letter to the judge used phrases like "material mistaken statement of fact" and "we deeply regret this error." Those are pretty extraordinary words from government attorneys who, just weeks ago, were confidently citing this same memo as rock-solid authority.

Who Filed the Lawsuit

The case is called African Communities Together v. Lyons, and it was brought by immigrant advocacy organizations including African Communities Together and The Door, a New York City youth services organization. The ACLU of New York and the firm Emery Celli are representing the plaintiffs.

Their core argument has been straightforward: arresting people when they show up for their immigration court hearings has a devastating chilling effect. Immigrants stop coming to court. They miss hearings. They get deported in absentia. It creates a system where the act of trying to follow the rules becomes the thing that gets you caught.

Judge Castel had previously rejected the plaintiffs' request to block courthouse arrests, relying in part on the government's assurances about the May 2025 memo. Now those assurances have crumbled.

Hundreds Arrested, Many Already Gone

The scale of what happened under this flawed legal rationale is significant. Hundreds of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have been arrested at immigration courts over the past year as part of President Trump's sweeping crackdown. Many of those arrested were detained at facilities hundreds of miles from where they were picked up. Some have already been deported.

That creates an almost impossible situation. If the legal basis for these arrests was built on a memo that doesn't apply, what happens to the people who were already swept up? The DOJ's letter doesn't address that question, and the judge hasn't yet responded to the latest filing.

This isn't a hypothetical harm. These are people who showed up to court, did what the system asked of them, and were arrested on the spot under authority the government now admits it didn't have (at least not from the document it was citing).

DHS Says Nothing Changes

Perhaps the most striking part of this whole episode is what happened next: nothing. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told NPR flatly that there is no change in policy. "We will continue to arrest illegal aliens at immigration courts following their proceedings," the statement read.

So the DOJ told a judge it was sorry for the error. And then DHS essentially said it doesn't matter because it's going to keep doing the same thing regardless. That's a remarkable disconnect between two agencies that are supposed to be on the same team, operating under the same legal framework.

It also raises a new question. If the May 2025 memo doesn't authorize these arrests, what does? Is there another internal policy DHS is relying on? Or is the position now simply that ICE can arrest people wherever it wants, memo or no memo?

What Happens in Court Now

Judge Castel now has to decide what to do with a case that was partly decided on information the government itself says was wrong. The DOJ acknowledged in its letter that the court's September 12 opinion and order, along with the plaintiffs' briefs, "will need to be reconsidered and re-briefed for the Court to adjudicate Plaintiffs' APA claims against ICE on the merits."

That's legal speak for: we need to start over on a big chunk of this case. The plaintiffs will get another shot at arguing that ICE's courthouse arrest policy violates the Administrative Procedure Act, this time without the government being able to hide behind a memo that was never relevant.

The DOJ also said it has sent a letter to ICE agents "reminding them of the correct information and policy." What that correct policy actually says, and whether it supports or undermines courthouse arrests, remains to be seen.

The Bigger Picture

This episode fits into a broader pattern that has defined the Trump administration's immigration enforcement: act first, figure out the legal basis later. We have seen it with the DHS shutdown standoff, with the deployment of ICE agents to airports, and now with courthouse arrests that were defended using the wrong paperwork.

The administration's posture is clear: enforcement is the priority, and legal niceties are details to be sorted out after the fact. That approach works politically with a base that wants aggressive action on immigration. But it creates real legal vulnerabilities, the kind that can unravel in front of a federal judge who doesn't appreciate being given bad information.

What to Watch

The next move belongs to Judge Castel. He could order new briefing on the legality of courthouse arrests without the flawed memo propping up the government's argument. He could revisit his earlier decision to deny an injunction. He could demand more detailed accounting of how many people were arrested under the now-discredited rationale.

For the hundreds of immigrants already detained or deported, the question is whether any legal remedy exists at all. Immigration advocates will push for it. The government will argue it doesn't matter because the arrests would have happened anyway. And somewhere in between, the courts will have to figure out what "oops, wrong memo" actually means for people whose lives were upended by it.