“Courthouses should not be used as bait,” Justice Cantil-Sakauye wrote, explaining that “trial courts strive to mitigate fear to ensure fairness and protect legal rights,” and these tactics don’t serve to accomplish that goal. To the contrary, she said that these methods that are being employed by ICE “are neither safe nor fair.”
Agents are indeed instructed not to arrest people in “sensitive locations” like schools or hospitals,” ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice told The Los Angeles Times, but that does not include courthouses. Kice explained that the increase in courthouse arrests began after local authorities wouldn’t cooperate with ICE requests to hold suspects at jails.