California law forbids ICE from making arrests at courthouses. Officers are showing up anyway

By Nigel Duara | CalMatters

Jennifer isn’t saying her brother is a saint. Far from it. He was convicted of domestic violence last year and entered a one-year intervention program. He graduated July 23 in a Fresno county courtroom where a judge told him he had done a good job.

Minutes later, while leaving the courthouse, five men and one woman in plain clothes approached him. 

“Someone came up to him, got in his face and said his name,” said Jennifer, who did not want CalMatters to use her last name because she was concerned about immigration enforcement agents targeting other relatives. “And they grabbed him, and I tried to get between them.”

Her brother, who is undocumented, didn’t provide them with an identification. 

“They shoved him in this car, which was a plain, beat-up van,” Jennifer said. “Then one of them asked if they should wait for ‘the other guy,’ and a different person said ‘we’re good with this one,’ like he was just part of their quota that day.”

Her brother is already back in Mexico. 

Social media is awash with videos of federal agents making arrests at immigration court hearings, which are on federal property, inside federal courthouses. 

What’s different about the detention of Jennifer’s brother is that it took place on the grounds of a state courthouse. Local media have reported the detention of at least two dozen other people on the grounds of California court buildings in Stanislaus, Glenn, Los Angeles and Fresno counties, and NPR reports federal immigration detentions in state courthouses across the country, from the Chicago suburbs to a county south of Boston. 

During the last Trump administration, California Democrats were so concerned about ICE making arrests at superior court buildings and potentially discouraging witnesses from testifying that they passed a law to forbid that kind of enforcement.

Picking people up at a courthouse can have a “potential chilling effect” on witnesses, victims and even suspects who are afraid to show up for court, California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said earlier this summer. 

“Making courthouses a focus of immigration enforcement hinders, rather than helps, the administration of justice by deterring witnesses and victims from coming forward and discouraging individuals from asserting their rights,” Guerrero said. 

By waiting outside the courthouse, immigration agents appear to be complying with California law, though it’s unclear whether the word “courthouse” in the law includes the grounds outside the courthouse. Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office wouldn’t provide what it a spokesperson called “legal analysis” of those actions when CalMatters asked about them.

But at least one immigration enforcement action was a clear violation of state law. 

In Butte County, immigration enforcement agents conducted an operation inside the county’s Oroville courthouse on July 28. State law forbids civil arrests “in a courthouse while attending a court proceeding or having legal business in the courthouse.”

“As far as the court is aware, ICE had not conducted enforcement actions inside one of its courthouses prior to Monday, July 28th,” Butte County Superior Court executive officer Sharif Elmallah said in a statement.

“The court is concerned by the potential chilling effect and other potential adverse impacts on participation in the legal system that may occur due to these enforcement actions being conducted in and around courthouses.”

As with the package of bills Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Saturday meant to keep immigration enforcement agents out of schools and hospitals, it’s unclear what California law enforcement can actually do to enforce the law forbidding immigration agents from making arrests inside courthouses. 

The state Justice Department’s guidance to state courthouses provides some latitude to immigration enforcement agents. They may make arrests inside a courthouse if the case involves a national security threat, someone’s life is in danger, evidence is in danger or agents are in “hot pursuit.” 

Failing all of that, under California law, immigration agents can enter a courthouse to detain someone whom they believe poses a danger to public safety if they can’t find an alternate location and they have the approval of a federal immigration enforcement supervisor. 

ICE defends courthouse arrests

Jennifer believes immigration agents ran her brother’s name through their own database when it was posted on the Fresno County Superior Court’s public online court docket, then waited for him to appear.

In response to questions from CalMatters, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded with a July quote from a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson which asserted the agency’s right to make arrests of “a lawbreaker where you find them.” The spokesperson also said the arrests are safer for immigration agents, since the people they’re arresting have been through security. 

Policies on courthouse arrests have seesawed through Democratic and Republican administrations.

The Obama administration in 2011 designated schools, hospitals and religious buildings as “sensitive locations” where immigration agents need permission to operate. ICE at the time said the list of sensitive locations was longer than those three types of places and urged agents to get permission from higher-ups before making arrests at any organization assisting “victims of crime.”

Trump undid that policy in 2018 with a directive instructing ICE agents to make arrests at state and local courthouses. They proceeded to do so, even in California. In 2021, the Biden administration reversed that guidance, putting courthouses mostly off-limits.In May, Wired reported that the new Trump administration went even further than its 2018 directive, explicitly removing instructions to agents that they should respect local laws that would prevent them from arresting people. 

Are immigrants avoiding court?

Jennifer said word has already gotten out among the immigrant community in Fresno to stop attending court. Family members even tried to discourage her brother from appearing on the day he was detained.

“In general, people are just avoiding going to the courthouse, even after meeting with groups who inform them that there’s consequences to not showing up,” said Nora Zaragoza-Yáñez, a program manager for the Valley Watch Network, an immigrant rights group.

A Fresno County Superior Court spokesperson said the court hasn’t seen a change in the number of people appearing, but noted that in a county of 1 million people, such shifts among a relatively small population would be hard to notice.

The state Department of Justice said it’s aware of the courthouse arrests. As a former member of the Assembly, Bonta, now the state attorney general, was a co-author of the law that was meant to deter immigration enforcement at California courthouses.

“We are very concerned with the Trump administration’s actions, which make our communities less safe by deterring victims or witnesses of crimes from coming forward out of fear of getting caught up in the President’s mass deportation dragnet,” the California Department of Justice said in an unsigned statement to CalMatters.