Attorney General Rob Bonta says immigration arrests in and around state courthouses have frightened victims and witnesses away from testifying; the White House called the suit frivolous.
By Staff Reporter
California sued the Trump administration on Thursday to stop federal immigration agents from making civil arrests in and around the state’s courthouses, the 100th lawsuit Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed against the federal government since President Trump returned to office 21 months ago.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles against the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, asks a judge to set aside ICE’s courthouse enforcement directive and to bar the agency from conducting civil immigration arrests at California’s courts. The case is State of California v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, No. 2:26-cv-12026, according to Bloomberg Law.
“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,” Mr. Bonta said in a statement announcing the suit. “Our justice system cannot function this way.”
Arrests continued after a court ruling
The lawsuit traces the dispute to May 2025, when, according to the state, the administration began authorizing and encouraging civil immigration arrests at courthouses. In the year that followed, the attorney general’s office said, the average monthly number of ICE arrests in and around California courthouses rose by more than 550 percent compared with prior months, with enforcement reported from Los Angeles and San Diego to rural courthouses in Shasta, Butte and Glenn Counties.
A federal court vacated the directive in late June 2026 in a case known as Pablo Sequen v. Albarran, which Bloomberg Law reported was decided in the Northern District of California. The state contends that the arrests did not stop. According to Mr. Bonta’s office, 34 enforcement incidents resulting in 30 civil arrests were reported at superior courts statewide in June, when more systematic data collection began, and 28 incidents resulting in 28 arrests were reported in July, after the directive had been vacated.
The complaint also cites a Sept. 30 ruling by a federal judge in New York, in African Communities Together v. Venturella, that found the administration’s January and May 2025 directives arbitrary and capricious. The state argues that ICE has continued to operate under a current courthouse directive that is “materially and effectively identical” to the one that was set aside.
The attorney general’s office described arrests carried out unannounced, often by plainclothes officers who did not identify themselves, in courthouse hallways, lobbies and parking lots, and said agents in some counties had waited in court parking lots for days.
The legal theory
California makes four principal arguments: that the directive is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act because ICE failed to consider its effect on the functioning of state courts; that it exceeds the agency’s statutory authority because Congress wrote the Immigration and Nationality Act against a centuries-old common-law privilege barring civil arrests at courthouses; that it is contrary to constitutional rights; and that it violates the 10th Amendment by interfering with the state’s sovereign power to run its own judicial system and prosecute crimes.
Immigration violations are civil matters, not crimes, and both common law and state statutes bar civil arrests at courthouses, The Sacramento Bee noted in its account of the filing.
The administration’s response
The White House dismissed the suit. “Instead of bragging about filing frivolous lawsuits against the Trump administration, the California Attorney General should focus on addressing problems in his own state — like the countless criminal illegal aliens extreme Democrats allow to roam free,” Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, said in an email to The Bee. She said the Supreme Court had sided with the administration in more than 25 cases and described lower-court rulings against its policies as “lawless injunctions.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg Law.
A ‘sobering milestone’
Mr. Bonta used the filing to mark a broader tally. In a separate statement, his office recounted litigation that began less than 24 hours after Mr. Trump’s January 2025 executive order on birthright citizenship, a case the state says it won at the Supreme Court, and that has since extended to federal funding for education, research, housing, health care and infrastructure, the deployment of the National Guard, voting rights, tariffs and environmental rules.
“This is a sobering milestone — and a testament to the unrelenting ferociousness with which the President is willing to steamroll over the law, our Constitution, and the fundamental values of our government,” Mr. Bonta said. “This isn’t a fight we chose.”
Earlier this year, Mr. Bonta also sued to block the development of an ICE facility in unincorporated Santa Clara County near Gilroy, his office said.
What it means for California
For the state’s courts, the stakes are practical as much as constitutional. Prosecutors depend on victims and witnesses who are willing to appear, and family courts, traffic courts and small-claims courts serve Californians who come to handle routine civic business. The state’s argument is that when defendants, victims and even relatives accompanying them come to see the courthouse as a place of arrest, cases collapse and public safety suffers.
The administration, for its part, has cast such suits as political grandstanding and points to its record at the Supreme Court. With the November election weeks away and Mr. Bonta’s office now at triple digits in its litigation against Washington, the courthouse case is likely to become another test of how far California can go in shielding its courthouses from federal immigration enforcement.
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