California's 100th Suit Challenges Federal Arrest Power

California filed its 100th lawsuit against the Trump administration in under two years on Thursday. The case challenges federal immigration arrests at or near state courthouses and asserts California’s authority over its judicial system. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests people accused of civil immigration violations, which Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta says deter victims, witnesses and defendants from participating in court proceedings.

The lawsuit says the arrests violate the Immigration and Nationality Act and interfere with California’s 10th Amendment rights to carry out its “core sovereign judicial and police functions.” The dispute pits federal enforcement policy against the state’s claim to authority over court access and operations.

The courthouse enforcement policy

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.” Arrests at or near courthouses began rising again after Trump took office in January 2025.

In June 2025, ICE agents arrested two women outside a Los Angeles County courthouse after a hearing in a local criminal case. Similar incidents occurred elsewhere in California. Alejandro Barraza, a criminal defense and immigration attorney, described three effects on his clients. One was arrested while driving home from a hearing at the Riverside County Hall of Justice in October 2025; another was arrested while leaving the Rancho Cucamonga courthouse; and a third pleaded guilty rather than go to trial because the client feared ICE arrest, despite Barraza’s advice that the case was worth fighting.

“The victims are losing,” Barraza said. “Our clients are losing their rights to due process. Everyone is losing.” Bonta said serious criminal charges had been dropped and cases jeopardized because victims and witnesses were too afraid to appear in court. “Our justice system can’t function this way,” he said.

Courts, state law and federal power

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

California court officials have tracked federal-agent arrests since the ruling and reported the figures to the Judicial Council of California: 30 people were taken into custody in June, 29 in July, 19 in August and 14 in September. Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law extending state protections to public ways within 1,000 feet of court facilities for people traveling to, attending or leaving courthouses for lawful purposes. The law keeps an exception for arrests under a valid judicial warrant.

Bonta said the state law didn’t make the lawsuit unnecessary, partly because the administration believes “no state law applies to them.” He also cited cases in which courts have sided with the federal government, including the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision this week blocking a state law that required federal immigration agents to display identification while working in California.

A wider confrontation

Independent legal experts pointed to the growing use of executive power by presidents of both parties and the increasing use of lawsuits by state attorneys general. During Trump’s first term, California 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 moved quickly on policies from his first term or outlined in the Project 2025 policy blueprint, while a Republican-controlled Congress and appointments of loyalists helped advance policies that drew further legal challenges. 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’s office has also challenged administration plans on birthright citizenship, tariffs, National Guard deployments and federal funding for California. Michael McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, called many of the state’s suits “legally meritorious,” while saying he didn’t “appreciate having government using my tax dollars for what essentially are in many cases ideological lawsuits.” The White House has called Bonta’s lawsuits baseless and misguided; ICE has defended courthouse arrests as a “common sense” way to apprehend offenders where and when authorities know they’ll be.