ICE Arrests Three Men at Manhattan Courts Days After Federal Judge Bars Courthouse Arrests

What Happened

On June 23, 2026, US District Judge P. Casey Pitts ruled that ICE and the Department of Justice's expanded policy of arresting immigrants at courthouses was "arbitrary and capricious" — a specific, technical legal finding meaning the agencies failed to offer a reasoned basis for the policy change. The ruling restored the pre-2025 rule, which limits courthouse arrests to high-risk cases such as those involving serious criminal histories or national security concerns, and reinstated a 12-hour cap on how long someone can be detained after such an arrest, replacing the 72-hour detention window ICE had been using.

Judge Pitts's order was not abstract guidance. It was a concrete, dated instruction to a federal agency: stop arresting people at immigration courthouses except in narrowly defined circumstances, and stop holding them beyond 12 hours when you do.

Within days, according to reporting published July 1, ICE agents arrested three men — from Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala — at Manhattan immigration courts. Advocates who tracked the arrests describe them as the first clear violations of two separate federal court orders barring courthouse arrests: Judge Kevin Castel's May 18, 2026 ruling in the Southern District of New York, which barred ICE from making arrests at Manhattan immigration courts except in a narrow set of circumstances under the 2021 policy, and Judge Pitts's June 23 ruling in the Northern District of California, which vacated the 2025 courthouse-arrest policies and applies nationwide. ICE has denied violating any court order; its spokesperson pointed to a trespassing conviction of one man and a 2025 disorderly-conduct conviction of another, but has not explained — publicly or to reporters — how these three arrests fit within the high-risk exceptions the ruling still permits. That gap between denial and explanation is the story: an agency asserting compliance while declining to show its work.

To be clear about what is and is not established here: this entry does not assert that ICE knowingly and deliberately defied Judge Pitts's order. ICE's stated position is that the arrests were lawful under an exception it has not detailed. What is documented is the sequence — a specific federal court order, followed within days by the precise conduct that order was designed to stop, followed by a denial that offers no supporting facts. Advocates and reporters characterize this as apparent defiance; that characterization, not a legal finding of contempt, is what this entry records.

Legal Analysis

This is, at its core, a domestic rule-of-law story, not an international-law one. The underlying immigration enforcement action is not the harm being documented — the harm is a federal agency appearing to treat a specific, recent federal court order as optional.

Judge Pitts's ruling is a valid order of a US District Court, issued under the Administrative Procedure Act's "arbitrary and capricious" standard, which requires agencies to provide reasoned decision-making before changing policy. Once a federal court vacates or restores a rule under that standard, the agency is bound by it unless and until a higher court says otherwise. There is no ambiguity in the mechanism; the question raised by these arrests is whether ICE actually followed it.

If confirmed through further litigation or contempt proceedings, conduct that circumvents a court order days after it issues would represent a serious breach of the separation of powers: the judiciary's core constitutional function is to check executive action, and that check is meaningless if an agency can quietly continue the enjoined conduct while issuing a blanket denial. This is precisely the pattern courts have sanctioned as contempt in other 2026 cases — not the underlying policy dispute, but the agency's conduct after losing in court.

The ICCPR's Article 14 fair-hearing guarantee is worth noting briefly: arresting someone at the courthouse where they are appearing for a scheduled hearing chills the right to be heard and undermines confidence that appearing in court is safe. But that international framing is secondary here. The primary legal exposure is domestic — potential civil contempt, further APA litigation, and a judiciary now forced to decide whether its own orders carry consequences when a federal agency appears to ignore them within a week of losing.