Overview
- U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell barred civil immigration arrests in Washington, D.C., without pre-arrest probable cause of unlawful presence and an individualized likelihood of escape.
- DHS must transmit the court’s order to all immigration-enforcement agents and record specific, particularized facts supporting any warrantless seizure in the district.
- Howell cited repeated statements by senior officials, including Border Patrol leadership and Stephen Miller, as evidence of an “arrest first” practice and called the government’s defense “ignorant or incompetent, or both.”
- The court provisionally certified a class covering people arrested without escape-risk assessments and rejected arguments that immigration review bars strip jurisdiction over arrest procedures.
- The case grew out of an August emergency declaration and a surge in arrests—an analysis counted 943 between Aug. 7 and Sept. 9—and it could prompt an appeal where recent Supreme Court emergency orders add uncertainty.