No ICE Arrests in NYC Immigration Courts

0:00The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand, but by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business, IBM. Being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling. Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own.

0:38Manage all your business finances, from banking to payments to credit cards, all in one place with Chase's digital tools. Plus, access online resources designed to help your business thrive. Learn more at chase.com slash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026. JPMorgan Chase and Company. Sonesta Travel Pass makes traveling more rewarding. Designed to help you get more out of every stay. Sign up at Sonesta.com to enjoy instant savings, bonus points, and valuable perks like early check-in, late checkout, room upgrades, and free stays over time.

1:21With Sonesta Travel Pass, every stay brings you closer to your next reward. Choose from more than 1 ,100 hotels across 13 distinctive brands and unlock the best available rates when you book direct with Sinesta Travel Pass. Here today, roam tomorrow. Join now at Sinesta.com. Terms and conditions apply. This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. For decades, ICE refrained from making arrests at immigration courts. But that changed under the Trump administration when ICE issued a new policy that allowed agents to arrest non-citizens as they were appearing for scheduled hearings in court.

2:06The policy led to protests and some ugly scenes at courthouses. Now a federal judge has ruled that Manhattan courthouses are off limits as far as ICE officers making arrests, except in some limited circumstances. My guest is Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland & Knight and the former head of the Office of Immigration Litigation in the Obama administration. Leon, tell us about Judge Castell's order, temporary order pending the outcome of litigation that challenges ICE's policy of making arrests at immigration courts. So the current state of affairs in New York City is if you go to one of the immigration courthouses in New York City, ICE is not allowed to arrest you unless you either have serious offenses in terms of a criminal history, or you have a final order of removal, or you're a national security or public safety risk.

3:02And so this all comes from the idea that people were being deterred from going into immigration court to have their immigration hearings because they were worried that ICE was going to arrest them when they would show up at the immigration court. And the reason they were worried about that is because that was actually happening during the time period where there was concerns about arresting 3 ,000 people a day. Arresting 3 ,000 people a day is not so easy. And so a lot of the places where people were getting arrested were in the places where they were most likely to be, which were at ICE check-ins and immigration courts.

3:42So you knew people were going there, but the point was you didn't want to deter people from going there because those were the key points of the throughput of the immigration system. And so people were stopping attendance of these ICE check-ins and of these immigration court hearings because they were saying, I don't want to get arrested simply for going to immigration court. So this judge had originally not wanted to enjoin ICE from arresting people in immigration court because the government had made the argument previously that there was an ICE guidance that was issued on May 27, 2025, that actually allowed them to do this.

4:27So that they had considered the matter, they had reviewed it, they investigated it, etc. her eye and they said yes so according to this memo we can arrest people at immigration court and so the judge said well look you had a policy basis for conducting these arrests i'm not going to join them but then just recently the department of justice actually went back to the court and said to the court sorry about that you remember when we told you that we had a memo that considered the need to go to immigration courts and have arrest. Just kidding. We didn't actually have a memo like that. It didn't actually apply to immigration courts, and so we're sorry.

5:07And so because there was no memo that actually considered this issue, then the judge said, well, then you clearly didn't use your obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act to actually consider this. So I'm not going to let you do this while the case is pending. I think the judge probably more frustrated about how this was done rather than the state of actual law. But because of the sort of I don't know whether you want to call it omission or whatever you want to call it. The judge said no more arrests and immigration courts in New York while this case is pending. Yeah, I mean, that was a startling admission by the U.S.

5:45attorney's office in Manhattan. And basically they blamed it on ice. So the judge said that a revision in his order was needed to correct a clear error and prevent a manifest injustice. Was it a legal error by ICE that caused that to happen? I don't know exactly, but I actually have a theory, June, because I was involved in this for many years at the Department of Justice. And so here's what happens. ICE coordinates extremely well with the Department of Justice when the cases are pretty much in any district. outside of New York City because those are all handled by the Department of Justice, Civil Division, Office of Immigration Litigation, where I was the head.

6:30And so everything can be coordinated. But in New York, there's a joke called the Sovereign District of New York that you don't tell the U.S. attorneys there what to do. They don't listen to anything going on in Washington, they do their own thing. So as a result of that, they have to correspond with ICE, and it's not clear who at ICE they're corresponding with, a New York person, some random person in D.C. who's not in the know. And so many times you would see, I would call this one of the Achilles heels or weaknesses of the entire litigation platform of the Department of Justice, is if you sued in New York, you'd have a completely different strategy case approach.

7:14Whatever you're doing in New York doesn't apply anywhere else. And so you almost have these two random, completely different things going on. And so it's very easy in that scenario for the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York to not actually know anything about what's going on at ICE and just be told by some ICE New York person, oh yeah, this memo covers immigration courts. That's not a surprising scenario when I hear it. The judge was surprised though. Yeah, well the judge, your viewers are getting inside knowledge here in terms of very few people understand this disconnect that goes on between New York and the rest of the country.

7:51So the judge is not going to understand why the Department of Justice writ large, because that's all the judge knows is this is the Department of Justice, doesn't have the correct information since this is the government. So the government, quote unquote, should have the correct information. But as we all know, there's not one government. There's a lot of people in the government. And depending on who you talk to in the government, you might hear something that's not correct. And so while this shouldn't happen and it's not something trivial, it's something I'm not surprised to hear has occurred.

8:24because that's the kind of thing that unless and until one day the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York actually wants to let their immigration cases get handled by the National Civil Division so that all the immigration cases are handled harmoniously, you're going to get potential situations like this. So the judge handed down the decision on Monday. On Tuesday, ICE violated the order. They arrested a 21-year-old Honduran at 26 Federal Plaza, which is one of the three immigration courthouses in Manhattan that the judge had ruled were off limits for arrests. And according to the New York Times, a man who worked with the immigration assistance program tried to hand the ICE officers a copy of the judge's decision, and they refused to accept it.

9:13And one told him that the agency didn't care. I mean, open defiance of a court order. Again, I don't want to give excuses. I just want to say sort of how these things work. So a judge issues an order on a Monday and on a Tuesday there's an arrest. It's not like ICE is some integrated artificial intelligence system where every human being is plugged in and suddenly knows all of America's case law instantaneously when that case law is introduced. So what happens is ICE clearly isn't implementing this memo with sufficient rapidity. And you had an officer who probably on Monday already knew, I'm going to arrest this individual, Mr.

10:03Alexander Castillo-Norales, because they say that they're a dangerous gang member. Who knows if this is true or not? I don't know. But if they really think they have a dangerous gang member in their sights, It's all the better for them to arrest this person to make sure that they're not walking around. But it turns out that they don't know the court order. Then the people tell them the court order. The problem from the perspective of the government is just people randomly handing an ICE agent a court order. That ICE agent isn't an attorney. What they know about the law is sort of what's in their training materials.

10:36materials. And so it's very complicated because they're not just going to read a court order and know the significance of what that court order is, what it's telling them to do. So you ended up with this very unfortunate situation and probably there will be contempt hearings about it. But just another set of facts of I get how it led to this. It shouldn't have led to this. There's no excuse for it. It's a violation of the court order. But you can understand how until these ICE agents who are not attorneys, who are just people probably sometimes with only high school educations, are given very specific guidance, you can only do X, Y, Z, they continue to operate as they've been operating.

11:22And nothing will deter them from their orders until the same person who gave them their prior order gives them a new order. The underlying case here is a suit brought by two New York-based nonprofits challenging the Trump administration guidance that broadens the circumstances in which civil immigration arrests can be made in or near a courthouse and rolls back Biden-error guidance restricting courthouse arrests. And the judge has found that there's a substantial likelihood of showing that the arrest policy is arbitrary and capricious. What's your take on how successful this challenge will be?

12:03Well, I think it's going to be tough. These lawsuits have been filed all around the country and nobody's been able to get an injunction that is of any significant oomph to it that has really stopped this. Now, I do think in this case in New York, it may be that given where this administration is right now, where it's not trying to ruffle any more feathers between now and the election, and then it's sort of gearing up for a post-election immigration enforcement roundup, that it may not do anything for now. I could see them just litigating this kind of in a slow track, low profile for now. But I don't think that the statutory scheme dissuades the Department of Homeland Security legally from conducting these arrests.

12:52The problem is if people stop showing up to immigration court, at some point, the immigration enforcement personnel have to make a decision. Do they want to start having to enforce all of these what are called in absentia removal orders, which is an order if you don't show up to court you're like ordered by default to be removed and then people will litigate these on an individual basis and all of that takes more time than just getting the actual removal order in the first place so you almost want to try to figure out is the juice worth the squeeze of these arrests and i don't know what they're going to decide there because if they're really focused on an arrest quota, removals be damned or anything else, then they'll keep doing the arrests because this is the way to raise the arrest quota.

13:43But if they're really looking at what is the way to get the highest number of completely enforceable, unappealable removal orders, then you wouldn't start arresting people in court because you leave yourself vulnerable to these due process claims. Stay with me, Leon. Coming up next, The administration spares banks from an immigration crackdown. Remember, you can always get the latest legal news by listening to our Bloomberg Law Podcast wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I'm June Grosso, and this is Bloomberg. The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works.

14:20At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business, IBM. Support for the show comes from Public. Lately, it feels like there are two types of investing platforms. Some are traditional brokerages that haven't changed much in decades, and others feel less like investing and more like a game. Public is positioned differently.

14:59It's an investing platform for people who are serious about building their wealth. On Public, you can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto without all the bugs or the confetti. Retirement accounts? Yep. High-yield cash? Yes, again. They even have direct indexing. Public has modern design, powerful tools, and customer support that actually helps. Go to public.com slash market and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash market. Add paid for by Public Holdings. Brokered services by Public Investing, member FINRA SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, SEC Registered Advisor.

15:37Crypto services by ZeroHash. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. Find home wherever you roam at Sinesta ES and Simply Suites, where longer stays feel comfortable, flexible, and easy. Stretch out and enjoy spacious accommodations and home-like amenities designed to help you settle in and stay productive or relaxed for however long you need. And when you're a Sonesta Travel Pass member, staying at Sonesta ES and Simply Suites means earning points toward free nights, upgrades, and more with every eligible stay. Go to Sonesta.com to book your stay and unlock the best rates with Sonesta Travel Pass.

16:14Here today, roam tomorrow. Join now at Sonesta.com. Terms and conditions apply. You're listening to Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. New York City is a sanctuary city with policies dating back to the 1980s. The new mayor, Zoran Mamdani, has tried to fortify New York's sanctuary city status. He signed an order blocking ICE from city-controlled spaces without a judicial warrant. He's publicly condemned federal operations at local hospitals. He'd released a Know Your Rights video. What effect do those actions have? I've been talking to immigration law expert Leon Fresco of Holland and Knight.

17:04Leon, the mayor is an immigrant himself and has been very strong about immigrants' rights and New York's status as a sanctuary city. If you were looking at a chart, it would kind of look like a U-shape in the sense that what happens is, yes, if you don't cooperate in any way and you create every possible obstruction with the federal government's immigration enforcement efforts, there will be less removals if the federal government does nothing about it. But if the federal government gets angry with you, so that's the sort of downward slope of the U. But if the federal government at the lowest point of that U decides, I'm very angry that I'm being impeded and enforced with.

17:47So what I'm going to do is start sending more agents to New York. And even though the state and the locals will not tell me where the foreign nationals are that do not have status, I'm just going to start looking for them everywhere. Then it'll make things worse. And so that's the determination that the local government has to make is what do they calculate the federal government's response will be? And if they think that the federal government's response will be one of increased resources, then that makes the problem actually worse. And so you could decide as a different strategy. It's probably one that if I was a mayor, nobody's ever elected me mayor.

18:27I've never run for me. I'd vote for you, Leon. But if I was a mayor, what I would try to do is reach an agreement with the ICE enforcement people that says, look, if I'm proactive about giving you criminals, will you leave everybody else in my city alone and not create a reign of terror? And I'd say I will only be very proactive and cooperative and give you all the help you need if you reach this agreement with me. I think there are agreements like that that are there to be had. But I think the problem is, politically, some people may think, well, that's not sufficient enough. We don't want anyone getting deported.

19:02And if you do that, then you end up with the situation where we're in now in New York and in some other places. So let's broaden this from New York. Banking executives were really concerned that the Trump administration would force banks to verify the citizenship of new and existing customers. I mean, there was frantic lobbying. Why were they so afraid of this? Well, the real worry was that there would be essentially, just like in the workplace where you cannot work theoretically, I mean, plenty of people work who are undocumented, but theoretically, if you want to work and you are in America, you have to give your employer proof of your immigration status.

19:44And what the banks didn't want to have to do is now take all of the hundreds of millions of accounts they have. This was sort of the worst case scenario and have to figure out the immigration status of every one of their customers. I currently work with banks all the time on various sanctions compliance issues. And even when you're doing this with very small groups of people, Cubans or North Koreans or whoever, the amount of different immigration statuses in the world, there's like hundreds of them. And there's a lot of quasi ones where things are pending. You don't exactly know what their status is.

20:21There's lawsuits every day which put people in and out of status again. And the judge will issue an injunction, put them back in status. And the injunction will get removed by the appellate court. And for the banks to have to keep track of all of that would become an incredibly substantial burden on them. There's no doubt about it. They would become like the police, but in the banking realm. And so they did not want that. But there still is an executive order that's out there that is voluntarily asking the banks to get more information on their customers. And so people do wonder, will the banks say, you know what, let's get out in front of this and let's start debanking people that we know don't have immigration status.

21:07And so we're going to have to wait and see how that works. And then it gets more complicated, too, from the standpoint of what if you're a visitor? So a lot of people come here on visitor visas. My favorite ones are the Canadian snowbirds. That's an example that everybody knows. They come from Canada. They're here six months a year. They go to Florida. They go to the early bird dinner and all of that stuff. And the question is, should they have a bank account or not? Because they don't actually have any status that gives them a social security number in America. But what's the problem with giving them a bank account?

21:39It's great for the bank here. It's great for them. It's great for everybody involved. And there's plenty of people like this who are six-month retiree-type people. And under these kinds of guidances, they wouldn't have an account that they could use. And so the question from the bank's perspective is, why should we have to be bank all these people? And that's a very complicated thing. And so I don't think the administration wanted to dive too much into this. So they're giving the banks flexibility to figure out what is going to be the best way to make sure that undocumented people don't have access to the banking system.

22:13But there's no requirement right now that banks have to debank undocumented people. Whoever thought I'd hear you say debanking. It's usually not my sector. So now, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis, the Trump administration has issued thousands of fines against immigrants that total more than$36 billion. Not that they've collected that. And it started taking people to court and seizing their tax refunds, garnishing wages. I mean, first of all, what are they finding them for? There are fines and penalties in the system. This is part of, again, a theme that we discussed previously, which is that in its core, immigration law is civil.

22:53It's not criminal. There are some things that are criminal. So coming across the border illegally, evading inspection is criminal. And if you get deported, coming back in without permission is criminal. But most immigration law is civil. And so a lot of the violations and the fines and penalties that you would get are civil. So things like overstaying your visa, you can be fined for each day you're here that you've overstayed your visa. So there's a fine for that. or taking, if you've been given an order of removal and you don't leave, or an order of voluntary departure and you don't leave, there are fines for that.

23:34So what the administration has started doing is it said, well, why did Congress put these fines there? Let's actually start doing it. Let's do something with this congressional authority that was in there. And so they're starting to say, if we know of a human being who's here without status, we're gonna just go into our databases and just start printing out thousands of these fine letters and send them out. And then if we can actually correspond it with tax refunds, then we'll actually not give the tax refund out. And so that's the main thing that's happening. A lot of these fines are being issued.

24:11They're not being paid. I had a client who's actually here on what's called a U visa, which is what happens is you're here, you don't have status, but you're the victim of a violent crime. This client was definitely a victim of a violent crime that it's well documented, the photographs and everything and the mental health issues that arose from it, et cetera. But the government didn't really know that. And so they tried to issue her like a million dollar fine. And we had to come in and say, hey, this is a person who's here on a U visa. Do you really think it's appropriate to issue them a million dollar fine?

24:46And they said, no, it's not appropriate. So they took it away. But the point is, so a lot of people are getting sent fine notices that they actually wouldn't even apply to them if they really thought about it or had legal counsel telling them. But the idea really is make it harder to be here, make it more potentially scary in the sense that you don't know what the issues are going to be with these fines. And if you actually are ever in a situation where the government would owe you money, such as in the case of a tax refund, then the government doesn't have to pay that money. The Trump administration overhauled the regulations on monetary penalties and they dropped certain requirements.

25:27And once the regulations were finalized, total fines are up more than 550 percent over the 10 ,000 ICE had issued before streamlining the process. And it's happened that some immigrants don't even know that they're on the hook until they're hit with a lawsuit or lose a tax refund. It seems like that. Because what happens is they used to have to personally serve you or get certified mail showing that you got it. And now that's not required. So this can all be done vis-a-vis AI and databases and just printing these things out and sending them out in bulk. And so they're able to issue these fines in bulk, but a lot of times they're not getting to people because these are transient people.

26:09They're moving wherever the work is or they're trying to avoid being detected or who knows what's happening. But the point is these fines are being sent to a last known address, but they're not getting them to the actual human being. And so it's only like you say later when there's a tax refund or a lawsuit when the lawsuit has to have personal service that people then realize that these fines were sent to them. Finally, we've talked before about the migrant detention cases. The appeals courts are divided on this. So divided the Fifth and the Eighth Circuits have upheld the mandatory detention policy.

26:47The Second, Sixth and Eleventh have ruled against it. And the Seventh Circuit panel split in three ways. So you'd normally expect that this would then go up to the Supreme Court. But are there reasons why both sides might not want to take the chance of going to the Supreme Court on this issue? Absolutely. And here are the reasons, which is from the government's perspective, immigration is a national issue. Meaning if you have two circuits right now, the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi, and the Eighth Circuit, which includes Minnesota, North Dakota, Missouri, I think, and some others that allow you to detain certain people without a bond hearing.