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immigration
'ICE Has Been Lying for a Year' About Being Allowed to Make Courthouse Arrests
"Courthouse arrests must stop immediately," said congressional candidate Brad Lander.
Mar 26, 2026
US congressional candidate Brad Lander is demanding a congressional investigation and civil rights actions on behalf of hundreds of people who have been "illegally abducted" at immigration courts across the country after the US Department of Justice admitted it has been relying on a lie put forward by federal immigration officials as it defended agents' arrests at courthouses.
Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote a memo on Wednesday to a judge who last September ruled that courthouse arrests could continue, based on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guidance which indicated that "ICE officers or agents may conduct civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when they have credible information" that a person eligible for deportation would be present at a court.
That guidance from May 27 of last year "does not and has never applied to civil immigration enforcement actions in or near Executive Office for Immigration Review immigration courts," reads Clayton's letter.
"The undersigned were specifically informed by ICE that the 2025 ICE Guidance applied to immigration courthouse arrests," Clayton wrote. "This regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error."
The letter represented a "jaw-dropping admission" by the DOJ, said New York University law professor and Just Security editor Ryan Goodman.
The ICE guidance has been used to underpin numerous arrests at courthouses for more than a year—those of the husband of Monica Moreta-Galarza, who was violently thrown to the ground by an ICE agent when she protested the detention at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City; Dylan Lopez Contreras, a Bronx high school student who was arrested when he showed up for a legal asylum hearing last May and was only released this month; and others across the country whose names and stories haven't made national headlines.
Clayton said his office became aware of the far-reaching error on Tuesday when it received an email issuing a "reminder that the May 27, 2025 Guidance does not apply to Executive Office for Immigration Review (Immigration) courts, regardless of their location.”
The US attorney wrote that Castel's opinion from last September, in which the judge ruled ICE's guidance clearly allowed arrests at immigration courts, "will need to be reconsidered and re-briefed for the court to adjudicate Plaintiffs’ APA [Administrative Procedure Act] claims against ICE on the merits."
Clayton issued the filing as part of an ongoing case in which immigrant rights groups sued over the Trump administration's arrests at routine immigration court hearings.
That case, said Goodman, is now one of more than 90 that Just Security has been tracking in which a court either "determined the Trump administration submitted false information or the administration admitted it."
Amy Belsher, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, told NBC News that the revelation about the ICE guidance is "yet again another example of ICE’s brazen disregard for the lives of immigrants in this country."
"It is now clearer than ever that there is no justification for ambushing and arresting people who are showing up to court," Belsher said.
Lander, the former city comptroller who is running to represent New York's 10th Congressional District, called Clayton's filing "a genuine bombshell, even by Trumpian standards."
"ICE has been lying for a year," said Lander in a video posted on social media. "Not just to you and me and to asylum seekers, but to courts and to prosecutors."
We just caught ICE in a bombshell lie.
They do NOT have the authorization they've claimed to arrest immigrants at 26 Federal Plaza.
Courthouse arrests must end now. There's never been a stronger case for why this rogue, lawless agency should be abolished. pic.twitter.com/MXIoJetffZ
— Brad Lander (@bradlander) March 25, 2026
"Courthouse arrests must stop immediately," he said. "It was time to abolish ICE a year ago. It surely is today."
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Venezuelan Sent to CECOT by Trump Seeks $1.3 Million in US Legal Fight
"What happened to Adrián Rengel is government-sanctioned torture and a failure to recognize his humanity because he happened to be an immigrant."
Mar 24, 2026
One of the more than 200 Venezuelan men whom US President Donald Trump sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador last year, Neiyerver Adrián León Rengel, sued the United States of America in a federal court on Tuesday, seeking $1.3 million in damages.
León Rengel entered the United States at a port of entry in June 2023, during the Biden administration, for a pre-scheduled appointment, at which "he underwent screenings and provided his biometrics," according to the complaint, filed in Washington, DC. He was released and scheduled to appear before an immigration judge in April 2028.
However, the filing details, after Trump returned to office, León Rengel "was wrongly identified as a member of the gang Tren de Aragua (TDA), repeatedly denied due process, falsely imprisoned, intentionally deceived, and—ultimately—illegally sent to El Salvador in blatant violation of a court order."
León Rengel was sent to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), where Human Rights Watch found deportees were subjected to "systematic torture."
He told CBS News in Spanish that "there came a point when I thought about hanging myself with the sheet they gave us... It was hell. Total hell."
As CBS—which eventually aired an investigation into the prison despite interference from editor-in-chief Bari Weiss—reported Tuesday:
León Rengel was arrested once in the US after a traffic stop and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for possession of drug paraphernalia in Texas, documents show. León Rengel said the car where the material was found was not his. He said he paid a small fine.
Beyond that misdemeanor, León Rengel's lawyers said he has no criminal history, and that he was deported despite having an active immigration case and lacking a deportation order. Justice Department records reviewed by CBS News do not list a deportation order for León Rengel and show he had an immigration court hearing scheduled for April 2028.
León Rengel said he was identified as a Tren de Aragua gang member because of a tattoo on his left hand of a lion with a hair clipper on its mouth. He said he has cut hair in the US and Venezuela, and denies having any gang ties. Other former CECOT prisoners have similarly said they were accused of gang membership because of their tattoos.
DHS told the network that "this illegal alien was deemed a public safety threat as a confirmed associate of the Tren de Aragua gang and processed for removal from the US." The department declined to provide any evidence to support its claim that he is a TDA member, saying that doing so would "undermine" national security.
León Rengel was ultimately freed from CECOT and returned to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap last summer. He is the first of the deportees to file such a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
"This case reveals an illegal and morally bereft plan of action at the highest levels of our government to defy a federal court, strip a man of his rights, and hand him over to a foreign government for torture to prove a political point," said retired Amb. Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, in a statement.
"Adrián Rengel spent four months in abhorrent, inhumane conditions because senior officials chose to flout the rule of law," he continued. "We are filing suit today to get justice for him. The rule of law applies no matter what the political aims of the administration."
In addition to Eisen's group, León Rengel is represented by the law firm Mariziani, Stevens & Gonzalez, with support from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
"What happened to Adrián Rengel is government-sanctioned torture and a failure to recognize his humanity because he happened to be an immigrant. He deserves his day in court," said LULAC CEO Juan Proaño. "His four months of illegal confinement is the devastating outcome of a system designed to treat Latino immigrants as criminals simply because of where they were born or the color of their skin."
"Rengel and others were stripped of due process, lied to about where they were being sent, and handed over to a foreign dictatorship to be tortured in America's name," Proaño added. "The United States government had the power to stop this, and they chose not to. The court should deliver the justice the executive branch intentionally denied him."
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Minnesota Sues Trump Admin Over Killings of Good and Pretti, Shooting of Sosa-Celis
"These shootings are just three examples of the violent actions committed by federal agents in Minnesota during the surge," the complaint notes.
Mar 24, 2026
Minnesota officials on Tuesday sued the Trump administration over its refusal to cooperate with state investigators probing the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents earlier this year, as well as the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was wounded but survived.
Agents with the US Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies descended on Minnesota's Twin Cities and surrounding communities in January. Protests and national outrage over President Donald Trump's "Operation Metro Surge" mounted after a series of related shootings in Minneapolis, leading to the current funding fight in Congress that has partially shut down DHS.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, on January 7; an unidentified agent shot Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan national, on January 14; and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez fatally shot Pretti, a 37-year-old US citizen and nurse, on January 24.
"These shootings are just three examples of the violent actions committed by federal agents in Minnesota during the surge," stresses the new lawsuit, filed in a Washington, DC federal court by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans.
"Federal agents also carried out illegal stops, sweeps, arrests, and dangerous raids in sensitive public spaces," the complaint notes. "The surge created widespread fear among Minnesota residents, both citizens and noncitizens. It caused hundreds of millions of dollars in economic harm. And it flooded Minnesota's federal courts with lawsuits challenging the unlawful detentions that resulted from the operation."
With the three shootings, "Minnesota authorities responded to the scene of each shooting to investigate" and "expected federal cooperation," the filing explains. "At the scene of the first two incidents—the killing of Renee Good and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis—federal agents initially indicated that they would work with Minnesota authorities and share relevant information. State investigators thus began their work in reliance on that understanding."
"But in both cases, federal agents quickly reneged on their pledges to cooperate. Instead of sharing information, federal authorities took exclusive possession of evidence that had been collected, and they denied Minnesota investigators access to key information," the document details. "At the scene of the third shooting—the killing of Alex Pretti—federal immigration officers physically blocked investigators of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) from accessing the scene. That physical obstruction persisted even after state officials obtained a judicial warrant authorizing access to the scene."
The filing points out that when "faced with unprecedented noncooperation," the plaintiffs submitted formal requests to DHS and the US Department of Justice—which are named as defendants, as are their leaders, outgoing Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Noem's replacement, Markwayne Mullin, was sworn in Tuesday afternoon.
"Defendants' responses to those requests—indeed, by and large, their refusal to respond at all—confirm that the federal government has adopted a policy and practice of refusing Minnesota authorities access to investigative materials relating to uses of force by federal immigration officers deployed to Minnesota as part of Operation Metro Surge," the complaint says.
Emphasizing Minnesota's "authority and responsibility to protect against and address violence within its borders," as well as the history of cooperation between federal and state authorities in significant criminal investigations, the plaintiffs are asking the court to rule the administration's policy of noncooperation and their resulting refusal to comply with these shooting probes unlawful.
According to The Associated Press, while the two departments haven't responded to requests for comment, Moriarty of Hennepin County told reporters that "we are prepared to fight for transparency and accountability that the federal government is desperate to avoid."
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