Court Users Face ICE Arrests as California Files 100th Suit

California filed its 100th lawsuit against the Trump administration in under two years on Thursday, challenging ICE arrests of people for alleged civil immigration violations at or near state courthouses. The arrests have left victims, witnesses and defendants weighing whether to take part in court proceedings or risk federal custody, State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said.

“We’ve seen serious criminal charges dropped and entire cases jeopardized because victims and witnesses are too scared to come to the courthouse to testify,” Bonta said. “Our justice system can’t function this way.”

The cost to court users

Alejandro Barraza, a criminal defense and immigration attorney, said ICE arrests had directly affected his clients. In October 2025, agents arrested a client driving home from a hearing at the Riverside County Hall of Justice. In December, another client was arrested while leaving the Rancho Cucamonga courthouse.

A third client pleaded guilty rather than go to trial, despite Barraza’s advice that the case was worth fighting. The client feared ICE would arrest him. “The victims are losing,” Barraza said. “Our clients are losing their rights to due process. Everyone is losing.”

Arrests began rising again after Trump took office in January 2025. An ICE memo issued in May 2025 said agents could conduct “civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present at a specific location.”

In June 2025, ICE agents arrested two women outside a Los Angeles County courthouse after a hearing in a local criminal case. Similar incidents followed across the state.

Enforcement and legal limits

Bonta’s lawsuit argues that courthouse arrests are arbitrary and capricious because they discourage participation in California’s justice system. His office says the arrests violate the Immigration and Nationality Act as Congress intended and interfere with California’s 10th Amendment rights to carry out its “core sovereign judicial and police functions.”

In June, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts in San Francisco struck down ICE’s expanded courthouse arrest policies nationwide. The case concerned immigration courthouses, but Pitts’s ruling also covered state criminal courthouses, restoring earlier restrictions on civil immigration arrests in or near courthouses except in limited circumstances. The Trump administration is appealing.

Since the ruling, California court officials have tracked federal agents’ arrests and reported them to the Judicial Council of California. They recorded 30 people taken into custody in June, 29 in July, 19 in August and 14 in September.

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law strengthening state protections for people traveling to, attending or leaving courthouses for lawful purposes. It extends those protections to public ways within 1,000 feet of court facilities, while keeping an exception for arrests under a valid judicial warrant.

Bonta said the state law didn’t make his lawsuit unnecessary, partly because the administration believes “no state law applies to them.” He also pointed to courts that have agreed with federal arguments in some cases. This week, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a state law requiring federal immigration agents to display identification while working in California.

A widening legal contest

Independent legal experts said presidents of both parties have increasingly used executive power, and state attorneys general have increasingly sued in response. During Trump’s first term, California, under then-Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, sued the administration more than 120 times over four years. Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration just over 100 times in four years.

Experts said Trump quickly began putting policies into effect from his first term or outlined in the Project 2025 policy blueprint. Daniel Farber, a professor at UC Berkeley Law School, said the administration was “doing more aggressive things right off the starting block” and repeatedly targeting California.

Bonta said his lawsuits had saved California more than $200 billion, largely by reversing Trump cuts to federal funding for the state. White House spokesperson Lauren Bis called on him to stop “filing frivolous lawsuits” and “focus on addressing problems in his own state.” Bis said the administration had secured “well over 25 Supreme Court victories” and that its policies had been “consistently upheld as lawful” despite lower-court injunctions.

ICE has defended courthouse arrests as a “common sense” way to apprehend offenders where and when authorities know they will be. Bonta said California would keep filing lawsuits if Trump kept breaking the law in ways that hurt the state or its residents.