Lawyers for ICE provided false information to justify arresting and detaining thousands of people who had attended immigration courts, according to newly filed court documents.
Federal prosecutors said that lawyers for ICE acknowledged that an agency memo from May of last year gave no authorization for the arrests, court documents show, despite previously citing it to justify the arrests.
The revelation was included in filings by the office of Jay Clayton, a US federal attorney, in a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups, first reported on by the New York Daily News.
The lawsuit is challenging ICE's practice of targeting people seeking to gain legal status in the US as they leave immigration courts. Agents have arrested thousands of people after they attended hearings, preventing them from further pursuing their cases.
The NYCLU said that ICE had not provided any legal justification for the arrests, which have been part of Donald Trump's wide-ranging, and sometimes deadly, effort to ramp up detentions and deportations.
“The implications of this development are far-reaching,†wrote Amy Belsher, an attorney for the NYCLU, wrote to Kevin Castel, a federal judge based in New York City who is overseeing the lawsuit against ICE.
“In the months since the court relied on the government's representation to deny plaintiffs preliminary relief, defendants have continued arresting noncitizens at their immigration court hearings, resulting in their detention – often in facilities hundreds of miles away.â€
An attorney for ICE emailed Clayton's office to say that the memo that prosecutors had relied on to defend the government in the lawsuit “does not and has never authorized†the arrests near the immigration courts, after previously claiming the opposite.
“We deeply regret that this error has come to light at this late stage, after the parties have expended significant resources and time to litigate this case and this court has carefully considered plaintiffs' challenge to the 2025 ICE guidance,†Tomoko Onozawa, assistant US attorney, wrote to the judge.
“This error, however, was not caused by a lack of diligence and care by the undersigned attorneys.â€
