A federal judge in New York has blocked ICE agents from making most arrests at three Manhattan immigration court locations, forcing President Trump’s administration back into the narrow Biden-era restrictions that treated courthouses like sanctuary zones.

The ruling covers 26 Federal Plaza, 201 Varick Street, and 290 Broadway in Manhattan.

A federal judge tied the Trump administration’s hands on ICE arrests at Manhattan immigration courts after government lawyers admitted making a ‘material mistaken statement of fact’ defending the policy. ICE must now revert to Biden-era restrictions on courthouse enforcement… pic.twitter.com/VeKj45p2sr

— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) May 19, 2026

Under the order, ICE can only make arrests in limited circumstances, such as when someone poses a serious public safety threat or there is an imminent risk of flight that cannot be addressed any other way.

In other words, illegal aliens who show up to their own immigration hearings are now largely shielded from the very enforcement system those hearings exist to serve.

The judge’s ruling came after government lawyers reportedly made a material misstatement of fact during proceedings. The error gave the court an opening to impose the injunction.

The administration’s lawyers handed the court an opening by relying on the wrong memo.

The bigger problem is what happened next: the court used that opening to put a major enforcement tool back under Biden-era limits.

Fox News reported the immediate impact of the ruling:

ICE civil immigration arrests at the three Manhattan immigration court locations are temporarily blocked while the broader lawsuit continues.

The ruling came after government lawyers acknowledged they had made a material mistaken statement of fact while defending the policy.

That legal error gave U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel room to revisit the courthouse-arrest fight and put the old restrictions back in place for now.

Practically, the ruling means ICE must revert to narrower Biden-era courthouse enforcement limits in these Manhattan immigration court settings. That is a major operational change because the administration had been using court appearances as predictable moments to locate people already inside the removal process.

The plaintiffs argued that the policy turned mandatory immigration hearings into arrest operations. The administration’s problem now is that a process mistake in court has handed the left exactly the kind of enforcement limit it wanted.

That matters because these are not random street stops. These are federal immigration court locations where the government already knows who is appearing, why they are appearing, and what stage of the removal process they are in.

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DHS has made the common-sense argument clear: nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them.

Officials have expressed confidence they will ultimately be vindicated on the legal merits.

The Epoch Times described the limits placed on ICE:

The May 18 ruling bars federal agents from conducting arrests at three Manhattan immigration courts except in limited circumstances.

The case came from a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union and other groups on behalf of The Door and African Communities Together. Those groups challenged ICE policies that allow federal agents to arrest people in immigration courts.

The judge said ICE agents may make immigration-court arrests only when there are serious threats of physical harm to public safety or similar urgent conditions.

That is a very different standard from ordinary enforcement at a location where federal authorities already know a person is scheduled to appear.

The ruling puts the government in the absurd position of knowing exactly where removable aliens will be at a specific time and being told it cannot act on that information unless the court-approved emergency box is checked.

Think about what this actually means in practice.

Someone enters the country illegally. They are placed into removal proceedings.

They are ordered to appear at an immigration court at a specific address on a specific date.

And now a federal judge says the government cannot arrest them there.

Documented NY reported the local scope and the DHS response:

The order applies to 26 Federal Plaza and two other Manhattan immigration courts, and it follows the government’s admission that a May 2025 guidance memo had been incorrectly used to justify immigration-court arrests.

Under the order, ICE may make arrests at those court locations only under certain enumerated circumstances, including imminent risk of death, violence, or physical harm. In ordinary cases, agents are now blocked from using the courthouse appearance itself as the enforcement point.

Documented NY also reported that an unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesperson defended the arrests as commonsense. The DHS position was straightforward: nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them, and the department believes it will ultimately be vindicated.

That statement is the core of the fight. The Trump administration sees a courthouse appearance as an obvious moment to enforce the law; the left sees it as a place where enforcement should be pushed back.

The left frames this as protecting “access to justice.” The argument is that if people fear arrest at court, they will skip their hearings entirely.

But that logic rewards noncompliance. It says the system should accommodate the possibility that someone might flee rather than simply enforcing the law against people who are already in the legal pipeline.

President Trump’s administration has been clear from day one that immigration enforcement means removing people who are in the country illegally, including those cycling through an overburdened court system that takes years to resolve cases.

Courthouse arrests are not random raids. They target people the government already knows are removable or have pending cases.

The legal error that gave this judge his opening is frustrating, and the administration’s lawyers need to tighten up their process.

But one mistaken statement should not become the foundation for gutting enforcement at three of the busiest immigration court sites in America.

If showing up to immigration court makes someone removable, that should be the moment the law actually works.

Not the moment enforcement backs off because a federal judge decided the courthouse door is a finish line for illegal aliens instead of a checkpoint.

What’s your take?