In the past 24 hours, federal immigration agents have been told to change two tactics they have targeted in recent days against suspected illegal immigrants, with a judge seeking to end detentions outside immigration court and ICE’s deputy executive director issuing a policy memo changing traffic stops.
The changes could have a major impact on how agents target people who are in the U.S. without legal status but don’t necessarily have criminal records, with ICE focusing on immigration courts where immigrants face hearings on their cases, leading to a sharp rise in detention numbers.
The agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has also come under scrutiny for its use of stops and high-speed chases, some of which resulted in injuries. Last week, an immigrant in Austin was shot after fleeing federal agents who stopped him while making a delivery.
newsweek CNN reached out to the Department of Homeland Security via email Thursday afternoon for comment.
ICE bans immigration court arrests
A federal judge in New York ruled Thursday that ICE cannot continue to detain people in immigration courts anywhere in the country.
Judge Kevin Castell, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled Thursday in New York that the Trump administration-era policy of arresting immigrants during court hearings was “arbitrary and capricious.”
“People should not be arrested for doing exactly what the legal system requires,” Oscar Sarabia Roman, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrant Rights Project, said in a press release. “They should be able to show up in court, participate in their cases, and walk away without fear.”
In 2025, a policy instituted under President Joe Biden that prevented agents from making arrests at courthouses was reversed, leading to detentions in both criminal and immigration courts.
The change was quickly challenged by immigration advocates, who argued that federal agents should not be allowed to wait outside hearings to detain people.
In March, the U.S. Department of Justice said the government mistakenly used the 2025 memorandum to justify arrests in immigration court, and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York wrote that the department deeply regretted the error.
Castor criticized the Trump administration on Thursday, saying there was no record that ICE had changed its policy and that the 2025 guidance never mentioned changes to courthouse arrests.
“The most likely explanation for this silence is that the position expressed in 2026 that immigration courts were never within the scope of the 2025 Policy was a recent invention and not the intention when the 2025 Policy was issued,” the judge wrote.
While Castel did not rule that the policy itself was illegal, he ordered the rollback of the 2025 policy, effectively putting Biden-era protections back in place around immigration courts.
“Today’s ruling is a huge victory for every non-citizen who seeks to safely attend immigration court proceedings,” Amy Belshe, director of immigration rights litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a press release. “For too long, we have seen masked and often armed ICE officers ambush non-citizens in courthouse hallways, throw immigrants to the ground, and implement policies that separate children from their parents.
Vehicle Stop Memo: What We Know
Agents were told Wednesday to stop high-speed chases and conduct vehicle stops only after completing specific training, according to a policy memo reviewed Thursday by The Associated Press.
The memo, signed by ICE Executive Deputy Director Marcos D. Charles, includes measures aimed at improving parking safety for ICE agents, the drivers they target, and others in or near vehicles.
ICE field office directors were told they must ensure agents use federal vehicles equipped with lights and sirens so the public knows law enforcement is involved in stops, and that all officers must wear and use body-worn cameras.
There are also five agency-specific training courses available for agents to complete, and only those who complete at least one training course can conduct vehicle interceptions, the memo said. Only those with a certain amount of training can proceed with what’s known as “immobilization,” where agents use their vehicles to trap or stop cars.
ICE allegedly downplayed the change as a routine adjustment after Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was shot by a federal agent after a traffic stop and fled in Austin, Texas.
Earlier this week, Garces Perez was charged with assaulting, resisting, interfering and impeding federal officers. The complaint includes stills from a federal agent’s body camera involved in the initial stop, but not from the agent who allegedly shot him after the high-speed chase.
ICE has secured funding to equip agents with body-worn cameras, but the rollout of the technology has been relatively slow, with the Department of Homeland Security citing the federal government shutdown earlier this year as the culprit. Lawmakers from both parties urged the agency to quickly implement the toolkit to increase accountability and transparency.
newsweek’s Reporters and editors used our artificial intelligence assistant Martyn to produce this story. Learn more about Martin here. Please contact Newsweek editors about this story: Jason Lemon and Gray Thomas