A federal judge in San Jose barred ICE agents from making courthouse arrests nationwide, finding in a class-action lawsuit brought by asylum-seekers in San Francisco that the practice violates an 80-year-old federal statute.In a 71-page ruling issued Tuesday, Northern District of California Judge P. Casey Pitts of San Jose found that ICE and the DOJ's Executive Office for Immigration Review violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law governing agency policymaking for the past eight decades, as the Chronicle reports. The ruling reportedly overturns the Trump administration's courthouse arrest policy nationwide and restores previous guidance that generally limited civil immigration arrests at courthouses to exceptional circumstances, such as national security threats. Pitts also struck down a policy allowing ICE to hold immigrants in field offices for more than 12 hours after arrest. The judge rejected the federal government's request to pause the ruling while it appeals.San Francisco became a focal point in the fight over courthouse arrests, with two of five federal lawsuits challenging the practice originating in SF, per the Chronicle. Pitts wrote that the federal agencies failed to adequately justify their change in courthouse arrest policy, calling the practice over the past year “arbitrary and capricious” and adding that it ignores the chilling effect such arrests have on immigrants appearing for scheduled hearings.As SFist reported in December, Pitts issued a narrower order blocking ICE courthouse arrests in Northern California, but Tuesday’s ruling went further, extending the restriction nationwide after reportedly finding there was no workable way to sever the policy’s application by jurisdiction.Attorneys with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, the ACLU, and other groups documented hundreds of cases in which immigrants attending routine hearings or check-ins were detained immediately after court appearances, according to KPIX. "We saw ICE regularly coming to court and arresting people," Millie Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program. "These are people who have no criminal violations, no immigration violations."The lawsuit was brought on behalf of several Bay Area asylum seekers, including Guatemalan asylum applicant Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, Colombian asylum seeker Ligia Garcia, and Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio, who said she was nearly separated from her infant daughter after being detained at San Francisco Immigration Court, as the Chronicle reports. Advocates argued that the arrests punished immigrants who were complying with immigration requirements by appearing for hearings.KTVU notes that legal observers expect the Trump administration to appeal to the Ninth Circuit, though Pitts noted that a final appellate decision could take more than a year. Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival called the ruling "naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda" in a statement posted on social media. Previously: Federal Judge Orders Homeland Security to Stop Arresting Immigrants at Courts In Northern CaliforniaImage: Google Maps ...read more read less