A coalition of immigrant rights organizations filed a class-action lawsuit against the Trump Administration Thursday evening, challenging courthouse arrests of asylum seekers and detention conditions at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) San Francisco Field Office at 630 Sansome. The lawsuit says immigrants are sometimes held there for days in “punitive and inhumane” conditions while they wait to be transported to detention centers.
The suit, which, filed by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCRSF), the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California (ACLU NorCal) and the Central American Resource Center of Northern California (CARECEN SF), contests recently implemented policies that allow ICE to make arrests at immigration court and to hold people in the field office’s cells for extended periods.
“We’re trying to do everything we can so that these policies that put people in impossible choices and have turned our immigration courts into a trap are vacated and stopped,” said Nisha Kashyap, Program Director for the LCCRSF. “People [should be able to] safely go to court without fear of arrest.”
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of four immigrants with pending cases, who have faced arrest and detention while going through immigration proceedings in Downtown San Francisco. As of Sept. 19, attorneys for the immigrants said that out of the two of the plaintiffs who were currently detained at 630 Sansome, one was already ordered released by a district judge. The other, who was held since Sept. 17 despite having cancer, high blood pressure and prostate issues, was transported to a hospital, after which he will likely return to detention.
Unlike previous petitions focused on individual clients, this case could have major implications for all immigrants facing proceedings within ICE’s San Francisco jurisdiction, as well as those currently detained or at risk of being held in the field office’s cells.
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. A hearing on class certification is scheduled for late October in San Jose before Judge Casey Pitts, said Kashyap.
A “chilling” summer of courthouse arrests
In late May, four immigrants were arrested by ICE agents outside of San Francisco’s courthouse on 100 Montgomery. Once rare, such arrests have become increasingly common around the country following the Trump administration’s decision to nearly double ICE’s daily arrest quotas.
Now, ICE arrests have become common in both of the city’s immigration courthouses, with weekly reports of asylum seekers being detained after their hearings by ICE agents who are reportedly waiting outside courtrooms to detain individuals even when a judge has not dismissed their cases. Kashyap said the practice had a “chilling effect” on people’s willingness to engage with their immigration process.
“We’ve seen rates of absenteeism skyrocket in immigration courts,” said Kashyap. “The courts themselves are a place of chaos and stress and confusion and trauma as people are being ripped from their family members simply for going to court and attending a mandatory court hearing.”
According to the lawsuit, 85 people have been arrested at immigration courthouses in Northern California in recent months — including the two courthouses in San Francisco as well as the ones in Concord and Sacramento. Advocates believe the true number is higher, since some immigrants now avoid court altogether, a decision that automatically results in deportation orders.
The lawsuit challenges ICE’s January 2025 policy authorizing courthouse arrests, arguing they undermine “the public’s basic expectations of a fair day in court before a neutral body.”
Concern over detention conditions
Focusing specifically on the temporary holding cells at 630 Sansome, the lawsuit also challenges ICE’s decision to extend the time immigrants can be held in temporary holding facilities from 12 hours to 72 hours, without making changes necessary for longer term incarceration.
According to the complaint, detainees at 630 Sansome are sometimes held for multiple days in cells not designed for overnight stays, while ICE waits to transfer them to detention centers in other parts of the state or country. The holding cells have no beds, the complaint says, forcing people to sleep on crowded floors, sometimes only given thin foil blankets or mats. Lights remain on at all hours, the suit alleges, and temperatures are kept cold. In the middle of the cell is an open toilet, with only “a low wall on one side.”
The lawsuit includes testimony from immigrants who say they are not given “basic hygiene supplies” and were ignored during medical emergencies unless they could ask for help in English.
“It’s really punishing,” Kashyap told El Tecolote. “It’s really demoralizing. The folks we’ve spoken to report feeling like they’re being treated like criminals. They’re humiliated by these conditions. And so it really takes a toll.”
With a quickly changing legal landscape, immigrant rights groups get creative
In recent weeks, attorneys have filed emergency petitions to win the release of some asylum seekers detained at 630 Sansome. Lawyers have done so by filing individual lawsuits, known as habeas corpus petitions, which argue that these arrests violate immigrants’ due process rights.
The argument, Kashyap said, is that those arrested at immigration court had previously been ordered released from custody by the federal government because they were not considered a flight risk or a danger to the community. Now, however, they are being arrested again, even though the government hasn’t determined that their circumstances have changed.
So far, the habeas corpus petitions have been “successful,” Kashyap said. District court judges have granted a number of temporary restraining orders, allowing many immigrants to walk home from 630 Sansome. But while these orders are issued quickly — the result of “extraordinary legal work” by Bay Area organizations working together to respond to the arrests — they require a lot of resources.
“It’s really incredible work, but it’s not sustainable,” Kashyap said. “It’s not sustainable to file individual lawsuits on behalf of every single person that comes to court, and let alone the choice that people are having to make of whether to go to court in the first place.”
She added that these petitions, which are sometimes granted only after someone has already spent a night in ICE’s temporary holding facilities, cannot prevent immigrants from experiencing an “unlawful” arrest or detention – so legal rights groups decided to file the class-action suit.
“Our lawsuit is really intended at addressing the root cause of this problem, which are these new policies which were enacted with no consideration for the impact that they would have,” Kashyap said.
In the coming weeks, Kashyap expects to hear more motions connected to the case, including petitions filed on behalf of the four immigrants who are named as plaintiffs. By the end of October, she said, a judge will consider their request for the case to represent not just the plaintiffs, but all immigrants who could be affected by these policies and conditions.
“We’re really eager to push this forward because we know that these policies and these practices have real-world impact on people’s lives every single day,” said Kashyap. “And we want to make sure that we’re doing as much as we can to get as much relief as we can for as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.”
Emma Garcia contributed reporting
