(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from arresting migrants at immigration courts, saying that officials violated the Administrative Procedures Act in enacting the policy.

U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California wrote in a blistering 71-page decision Tuesday that policies by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Executive Office of Immigration Review were “arbitrary and capricious” and violated the APA, and he issued nationwide injunction blocking the practice across the United States.

“Because the record before the Court demonstrates ICE and EOIR failed to provide reasoned explanations for their actions, the Court concludes that each of the challenged policies is arbitrary and capricious in contravention of the APA,” he wrote in his decision.

The Justice Department attempted to curtail the request to only the Northern District of California instead of a nationwide block.

Scenes of migrants being arrested at immigration courts across the country, including notably in New York City, drew scrutiny from local lawmakers and advocacy organizations, who said migrants were often arrested after their deportation cases were dismissed.

Deportation hearings in immigration court are legal proceedings initiated by the Department of Homeland Security in which an immigration judge determines whether a migrant should be removed from the United States. Often, an immigration judge will dismiss a case to allow the individual to pursue legal relief by seeking asylum, according to attorneys. Other times, DHS attorneys will request dismissals if the individuals are not a priority for removal.

In most cases, when a deportation case is dismissed, it is a positive outcome for a migrant. Immigration attorneys ABC News spoke with said the Trump administration has been using dismissals to detain people at immigration courts and place them into expedited removal without allowing them to fight their cases.

In previous years, ICE has prioritized conducting courthouse arrests of people who were considered risks to the public or were convicted or accused of certain crimes.

The Trump administration had argued that an executive order issued by President Donald Trump allowed for the agencies to enact the policy, but Judge Pitts disagreed.

“It is now clear that the lack of connection between ICE’s stated rationales for the 2025 courthouse-arrest policies and the expansion of arrests at immigration courthouses results not from merely unreasoned decision making but a complete lack of decision making. As the government recently revealed, contrary to its prior representations, ICE’s 2025 courthouse arrest policies do not cover immigration courthouses at all,” he wrote.

That is a reference to a case in New York, in which the DOJ notified a judge that it had been erroneously relying on an ICE memo to justify arrests at immigration courts, according to a court filing. In fact, the ICE memo does not apply to civil immigration enforcement actions in or near immigration courts, the DOJ told the judge in that case.

James Percival, the DHS general counsel, said Tuesday’s ruling is “anti-American.”

“When a judge sentences a defendant, the defendant is taken into custody. If an alien is ordered removed by an immigration judge, the same should happen,” he said in a post on X. “A district judge ordering otherwise is naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda.” 

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(WASHINGTON) — The House on Tuesday followed the Senate in passing a sweeping housing reform package and sent the bipartisan measure to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.

The vote in the House was 358-32. The 21st Century Road to Housing Act was brought up under suspension and reached the required two-thirds majority threshold for passage. The 32 no votes were all Republicans while all Democrats present voted in favor.

The Senate voted 85-5 to pass the bill a day earlier.

With midterm elections months away, Congress is taking noteworthy and rare bipartisan action to tackle one element of affordability, a talking point in races across the country this year.

The bill comes as a recent Zillow analysis found the cost of buying a starter home is $1 million or more in a record 242 cities across the country.

What is in the bill?

The legislation aims to address the nation’s housing shortage by increasing the supply of homes and overall homeownership. This is achieved through loosening regulations to encourage housing construction and limiting Wall Street investors’ ability to buy homes that could go to families instead.

A 2024 study from the government-sponsored housing enterprise Freddie Mac estimated that U.S. faces a shortfall of 3.7 million units contributing to its housing crisis.

The bill also provides grants to turn vacant buildings into affordable housing.

By increasing the supply of homes for sale, the legislation is intended to lower home costs for Americans.

What’s next for the bill?

The bill must go to the desk of President Donald Trump to become law.

On Wednesday, Trump said he is putting off signing the bipartisan housing reform bill until Congress passes his SAVE America Act.

Trump was slated to sign the legislation at noon on Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

He canceled the event a few hours before it was due to start, announcing his ultimatum on social media.

“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” the president wrote in a post.

Trump has insisted since March that he will not sign any legislation until the SAVE America Act is sent to his desk. In a social media post on March 8, Trump wrote that it “supersedes everything else.”

What did the bill’s supporters say about the housing act?

“Today’s vote proves that it is possible to find bipartisan common ground on legislation that actually helps the American people, and importantly, it proves that bipartisan legislation doesn’t have to be the weakest, most milquetoast agreement that doesn’t offend anyone or do too much to help anyone,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said on the Senate floor ahead of Monday’s vote. 

“I don’t say this a lot, but today I’m proud to be a member of the United States Senate,” Warren said.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, discussed how the bill can give Americans more options on Monday.

“When you put more housing supply on the market, more people have a chance to become first-time homebuyers,” he said. “Today, the average first-time homebuyer is 40 years old. That is just too old.”

What did the bill’s opponents say about it?

Republican Sens. Ron Johnson (Wisc.), Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Ky.), Rick Scott (Fla.) and Tommy Tuberville (Ala.) voted against the legislation. Over the weekend, Sen. Rick Scott explained his objection to the legislation, saying he can’t see how the government can drive down the cost of housing.

“What’s going to drive down the U.S. cost of housing, two things, if you balance a budget, interest rates are going to come down, one of the biggest with lousing,” Scott said on Fox News’ Saturday in America. “Number two, most of regulation with respect to housing is not the federal level. It’s at the local level, what cities and counties are doing. The federal government cannot drive the cost of housing down.”

ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool will be drained again for “permanent repair” around the Fourth of July, and said that six people have now been arrested for alleged damage to the site.

The Reflecting Pool has been plagued with algae and peeling paint in the days since the Trump administration completed its renovation, which cost taxpayers more than $16 million.

Trump said in a social media post that “large areas of grass are being replaced” around the pool and that the administration “will drain some of the water, either immediately before or after the Fourth of July, to do the permanent repair.”
Trump has blamed the Reflecting Pool’s issues on vandals, though has yet to offer evidence.

“Six people have been arrested, and seven people have been cited, for the damage they did to our Country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote in the post.

“The 350 foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors, is actually numerous slashes over a very long 350 foot length. It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night, to create such a condition. Likewise, the small area at the bottom of the Pool was cut and powerfully lifted off the surface leaving very jagged, uneven edges,” Trump wrote.

On Monday, during an Oval Office event, Trump directed reporters to the Interior Department and the Parks Department for information on ongoing investigations into alleged damages but provided no evidence himself.

The Interior Department and the U.S. Park Police have not responded to multiple outreaches for evidence of the alleged vandalism.

Trump’s post comes after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, during a Fox News interview on Monday night, said the number of vandalism-related arrests had risen to six.

Earlier on Monday afternoon, an Interior Department spokesperson said there had been five arrests for vandalism, five federal citations and 14 vandalism-related police reports.

Algae and leaks have long plagued the Reflecting Pool, which was constructed in the 1920s. Former President Barack Obama made his own attempt at renovations during his administration and spent roughly $35 million on the changes.

ABC’s Emily Chang contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Senate on Tuesday adopted a House-passed Iran war powers resolution by a 50-48 vote in a symbolic, yet rare, rebuke of President Donald Trump.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday bolstered the ability of federal border agents to remove from the country lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, who may have committed a crime involving “moral turpitude.”

In a 6-3 decision by Justice Clarence Thomas in Blanche v. Lau, the court said border agents do not bear the burden of having to prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that an immigrant seeking to re-enter the country after a trip abroad had committed a crime before denying them admission, but need only show that there was reason to believe they had.

“The Immigration and Nationality Act does not impose that requirement,” Thomas wrote. 
The ruling effectively makes it easier for border officials to strip lawful permanent resident (LPR) status from people as they arrive at U.S. ports of entry.

It is also a setback for plaintiff Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen and U.S. green card holder who was deemed inadmissible at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2012 as he was returning from a trip to China. Officials denied his formal re-entry into the U.S. because he faced New Jersey state charges for trademark counterfeiting at the time, though he was conditionally allowed readmission.

.S. immigration law states that green card holders who legally leave the U.S. for short periods should be allowed to re-enter, but there are exceptions – among them if the green card holder is convicted of or admits to having committed “a crime involving moral turpitude.”

A year later, Lau pleaded guilty to the counterfeiting charge and was subsequently ordered deported. He continued to contest his removal, arguing that the crime didn’t constitute one of “moral turpitude.”

In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, argued that the government must bear the burden of first proving that a green card holder had, in fact, committed a crime before stripping their status.

“I worry that the court has now handed the government a massive blank check,” Jackson wrote, in part. “With today’s the decision, the Court allows the government to return an LPR to the status of ‘seeking admission’ upon his entry at the border, so long as the government is able to show later that he was eventually convicted. That sequencing undermines the plain terms and basic operation” of the law.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that oil giant Exxon Mobil can sue the Cuban government over more than $1 billion in seized property, potentially giving the United States greater financial leverage over the cash-strapped country.

In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that state-owned companies can’t argue they are protected by sovereign immunity to fight litigation over assets seized by Cuba’s communist government.

The decision — as well as a similar case last month when the Supreme Court ruled companies can be held liable for using seized property — comes as the Trump administration ratchets pressure on the struggling island nation through embargoes and a criminal indictment of former leader Raul Castro. The decision could open the door to more litigation over assets seized by the Cuban government, adding pressure to the economically distressed country.

The case revolved around the interpretation of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, also known as the Helms-Burton Act, which was passed by Congress after Cuba shot down two unarmed planes flown by humanitarian organization Brothers to the Rescue. The law established the right of U.S. nationals to sue over property seized by the Cuban government, though every president until President Donald Trump waived that provision.

The day Trump allowed lawsuits against Cuba in 2019, Exxon Mobil sued over their property in the country — including hundreds of gas stations, an oil refinery, depots and packaging plants — valued at more than $1 billion. In court, the Cuban government argued that the companies were protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and that Exxon would need to show they were exempted from that law for the case to proceed. Both the district and circuit courts sided with Cuba — eventually leading the case to the Supreme Court, which reversed those rulings in the opinion on Tuesday.
“It would make little sense for Congress to construct an elaborate statute authorizing suits against the Cuban government agencies and instrumentalities if, because of the FSIA, almost no suits could ever get through the courthouse door,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote that “the entire architecture of the Helms-Burton Act” establishes that sovereign immunity does not apply and that ruling otherwise would “badly undermine Congress’s design and thwart the President’s statutorily authorized assessment of current developments in Cuba.”

“After the President has allowed suits under the Act to go forward, there is no additional FSIA hurdle that a plaintiff must clear in order to sue Cuban agencies or instrumentalities,” wrote Kavanaugh. “The Helms-Burton Act authorizes private suits against Cuban agencies and instrumentalities — suits that would largely be nonstarters if subjected to the FSIA’s requirements.”

The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the majority, writing that the Helms-Burton Act falls short of the high legal bar to show that it eliminates claims of sovereign immunity.

“Nothing in the text or ‘architecture’ of the Helms-Burton Act suggests that Congress abrogated the sovereign immunity of these defendants — much less that it did so with the requisite unmistakable clarity,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote.

Last month, the Supreme Court delivered a similar defeat for Cuba, ruling that cruise lines Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian and MSC can be held liable for using a port confiscated by the Cuban government.

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