A California federal judge on Thursday barred U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining two asylum-seeking mothers without notice and a hearing, ruling the agency's courthouse arrest tactics likely violate due process.

In a 24-page order, U.S. District Judge Casey Pitts granted the preliminary injunction request filed on behalf of Ligia Garcia and Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio. The judge said the government may not detail the women during the pendency of their immigration proceedings, "without providing them with pre-detention bond hearings before a neutral immigration judge."

If such a hearing is held, the government may only detain the women if it "bears its burden of demonstrating by clear and convincing evidence" that Alvarado Ambrocio or Garcia "are a danger to the community or a flights risk and that no conditions other than detention would be sufficient to prevent such harms," the judge states.

The women are likely to succeed on the merits of their due process claim, the judge said, and without the injunction will likely to suffer "irreparable" harm.

The judge notes that, under federal law, if a noncitizen states an intent to apply for asylum and an immigration officer determines there is a credible fear of persecution, they will not be subjected to expedited removal. Instead, they are to receive an evidentiary hearing before an immigration judge, the right to counsel, and the right to seek review by the Board of Immigration Appeals and a federal court of appeals.

When Garcia and Alvarado Ambrocio came to the U.S. in March and April 2024, respectively, DHS released them on their own recognizance subject to certain conditions.

"Petitioners are therefore entitled to due process under the Fifth Amendment with respect to their protected liberty interest in remaining out of immigration custody," Judge Pitts states in his order.

The government argued that the women had no due process rights, but the cases they cited only applied to noncitizens "seeking initial entry" who are "on the threshold" of entering the country, the judge said.

That's not the situation with Alvarado Ambrocio and Garcia, who have lived in California for more than a year and a half, are residing with family or romantic partners, and became active members of church communities, he underscores.

Under the law, the women can remain out of custody unless it is determined at a hearing that they "pose a threat to the public or a flight risk," Judge Pitts said.

The putative class action complaint was filed in August by another asylum seeker, Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, and amended last month to include Alvarado Ambrocio and Garcia. It accuses Trump administration officials of turning Northern California's immigration courts into "a trap" where masked agents ambush and needlessly arrest immigrants who must then endure squalid conditions in a makeshift San Francisco holding facility.

The facility in question, which was initially limited to holding people for 12 hours or less, has now been authorized to hold people for up to 72 hours even though it is not equipped to do so, according to the complaint.

Sequin, according to the complaint, is an asylum-seeker from Guatemala with no criminal record who was arrested after an immigration hearing in July and held overnight at the ICE facility. On Sept. 16, Judge Pitts granted her request for a preliminary injunction requiring ICE to release her from custody and enjoining ICE from re-detaining her without notice and a prearrest hearing.

Alvarado Ambrocio is an asylum-seeker from Guatemala with no criminal record who narrowly avoided arrest due to the presence of her 9-month-old child. Garcia, an asylum-seeker from Colombia with no criminal record, was arrested.

The two women were added on Sept. 18 to the amended lawsuit, and Judge Pitts issued a temporary restraining order the day after requiring the government to release Garcia.

The suit claims the administration unlawfully reversed federal policies to allow ICE to arrest people in areas that have long been off-limits and to detain people for longer amounts of time in a facility that falls far short of legal requirements and the agency's own standards.

The situation has become unworkable for immigrants facing hearings in courts in San Francisco; Concord, Connecticut; and Sacramento, California, the plaintiffs say.

"Now they must either risk immediately and arbitrarily losing their freedom or lose their opportunity to pursue their lawful claims to remain in the United States," the plaintiffs said in the complaint. "Converting required hearings into a trap in this manner undermines the public's basic expectations of a fair day in court before a neutral body."

According to the complaint, the Trump administration unlawfully scrapped policies limiting immigration enforcement in areas such as courthouses in a push to ramp up immigrant arrests that's focused almost entirely on numbers rather than the records of the people being arrested.

Nearly two-thirds of the deportations the administration carried out through May have involved people with no criminal record, according to the suit.

The plaintiffs aim to represent classes including immigrants who face courthouse arrest and immigrants who are or will be detained at the San Francisco facility, according to their complaint.

The complaint asserts various claims for Administrative Procedure Act violations associated with the administration's policy changes, as well as claims for due process violations related to the detention of immigrants, conditions at the facility and ICE's treatment of detainees.

Named defendants include Sergio Albarran, the San Francisco field office director for ICE; Marcos Charles, acting executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations at ICE; Thomas Giles, assistant director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE; Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE; and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Jordan Wells of the Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, told Law360 in a statement Thursday, "We are encouraged by the court's decision and are eagerly seeking broader relief to halt the federal government's ill-considered decision to convert immigration court into a trap for immigrants seeking their day in court."

Thursday's order from Judge Pitts adds to a series of rulings finding ICE can't re-arrest immigrants unless it first proves to a judge that they're a danger or flight risk — including a decision last month from a Florida federal judge.

There have also been federal court rulings banning law enforcement officers from arresting or detaining individuals inside the courthouse, including a June order from the chief federal judge for the District of Connecticut. That order provides exceptions for courtroom security functions and federal offices housed in shared buildings.

A New York law that blocks immigration officials from making arrests near state courthouses has been challenged by the Trump administration. New York district attorneys, legal aid groups, law professors and retired judges have expressed support for the state law in amicus briefs.

The plaintiffs are represented by Mark L. Hejinian, Marcia V. Valente, David C. Beach, Charmaine G. Yu, Evan G. Campbell and Darien Lo of Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP, Neil K. Sawhney and Lauren M. Davis of the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Northern California, Marissa Hatton, Andrew Ntim, Victoria Petty, Jordan Wells and Nisha Kashyap of Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, and Laura Victoria Sánchez of Carecen SF.

The defendants are represented by Douglas Earl Johns of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.

The case is Sequen v. Kaiser et al., case number 5:25-cv-06487, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

--Additional reporting by Rachel Riley, Craig Clough, Aaron Keller, Ryan Boysen and Tom Lotshaw. Editing by Adam LoBelia.