Top ICE official quietly sent memo to clarify agency’s arrest policy after months of chaos in courthouse hallways

Donald Trump’s administration has falsely stated for nearly a year that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers can arrest people inside immigration courts, where agents standing outside courtroom doors have swiftly cuffed thousands of immigrants immediately after they left their hearings.

The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan — which emerged as a major flashpoint for courthouse arrests over the last year — repeatedly expressed “regret” in a letter to a federal judge this week, saying that his office mistakenly defended an ICE memo that “does not and has never applied” to immigration court arrests.

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton blamed ICE and the agency’s legal team, which “specifically informed” his office that a Trump-era memo “applied to immigration courthouse arrests,” according to Clayton.