Sensitive Locations: Where Can ICE Make Arrests?

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When the Department of Homeland Security changed its immigration-enforcement policy in 2025, one congregation reported a 66 percent drop in English-class attendance in less than two weeks. The religious plaintiffs’ court brief attributed that decline to fears of immigration enforcement. The dispute over where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can make arrests thus reaches into access to worship and community services.

The withdrawn national policy no longer settles where ICE may act; particular court orders and entry rules can still limit its actions.

The national policy changed

On January 20, 2025, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman issued Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas, rescinding Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s October 27, 2021 Guidelines for Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas. The new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memorandum addressed enforcement by both ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

DHS called for officers to balance enforcement interests and the sensitivity of the location, using discretion and common sense instead of bright-line rules about where immigration laws could be enforced. ICE’s January 31, 2025 memorandum, Common Sense Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas, assigned case-by-case decisions about whether, where and when to enforce near protected areas to Assistant Field Office Directors and Assistant Special Agents in Charge.

DHS defended the change as a way to catch criminal noncitizens and prevent them from using schools or churches to avoid arrest. That is the agency’s enforcement rationale, rather than evidence that every action at one of those places is lawful.

What the withdrawn policy meant

The old guidance sought to avoid enforcement that would discourage access to essential services and activities, including medical care, education, food and shelter, and worship. It tried to protect access by changing officers’ behavior, rather than by changing who qualified for a service.

Its nonexhaustive examples included schools from preschool through college, medical and mental-health facilities, and places of worship or religious study. The healthcare examples extended beyond hospitals to doctors’ offices, clinics, vaccination or testing sites, urgent-care centers and other facilities.

The guidance covered arrests, civil apprehensions, searches, inspections, seizures, service of charging documents or subpoenas, interviews and immigration-enforcement surveillance. The protected-areas label therefore concerned more than an arrest at a building’s door.

The old memo listed limited circumstances for enforcement, including national-security threats, imminent physical harm, hot pursuit, threatened destruction of criminal evidence and the absence of a safe alternative location. Outside emergency circumstances, officers needed prior headquarters or delegated approval; when an emergency prevented that approval, they were to consult headquarters or its delegate afterward.

The memo expressly disclaimed creating any enforceable individual right or benefit. Calling an area protected never meant that it was immune from every immigration action. An old list of protected places cannot, by itself, establish the rules governing an officer today.

Permission to enter and authority to arrest are separate

An administrative ICE warrant is issued by authorized immigration officials and permits an immigration officer to arrest and detain a person pending a decision about removal. As the Congressional Research Service explains, these warrants are not issued or reviewed by a judge and do not confer the same authority as judicially approved arrest warrants.

CRS describes lower-court rulings that forced home entry without a judicial warrant violated the Fourth Amendment when no recognized exception applied, such as the owner’s consent or an emergency involving harm or threatened destruction of evidence.

Senator Richard Blumenthal’s February 13, 2026 account of a Senate hearing identifies Todd Lyons as ICE’s then-acting director. In that exchange, Lyons defended administrative-warrant home entry by invoking United States v. Lucas, while Blumenthal disputed that interpretation. That exchange states a disputed agency position, rather than a judicial resolution of the entry question.

For immigration-status inspections, DHS regulations distinguish nonpublic business areas, requiring a judicial warrant or the owner’s consent, from publicly accessible business areas that officers may enter without a warrant or consent. Permission to stand in a public lobby is different from permission to enter a restricted room.

For a warrantless civil immigration arrest, federal law allows action when an officer observes unlawful entry, or has reason to believe someone is unlawfully present and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. Being present at a publicly accessible location does not eliminate the separate legal requirements for arrest.

Religious lawsuits produced defined protections

The plaintiffs in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security include Quaker meetings and yearly meetings, Sikh Temple Sacramento and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. On August 18, 2026, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the Maryland district court’s preliminary injunction order. A preliminary injunction provides temporary protection while litigation continues.

The Maryland injunction covered only the plaintiffs and affiliated places they identified to the district court, and required DHS to follow the 2021 protected-areas policy there. That requirement incorporated the policy’s enforcement and approval limits described earlier. The injunction expressly allowed arrests in or near those places of worship when authorized by an administrative or judicial warrant. The order’s protection turned on the identified community and site, not merely on whether a building was called a church.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) restricts substantial government burdens on religious practice, including burdens caused by generally applicable rules. When a substantial burden is shown, RFRA’s strict-scrutiny test requires a compelling government interest and the least restrictive means of achieving it. The test demands an especially strong reason and a way to achieve it that imposes the least restriction on religious practice.

The Fourth Circuit found the plaintiffs likely to succeed under RFRA because the policy substantially burdened their religious exercise. The appellate judges also found that the government had waived its strict-scrutiny argument by failing to present legal argument or evidence on it in the district court. That procedural failure does not amount to a ruling that immigration enforcement can never justify an action near worship.

In its appellate brief, the government asserted a compelling interest in uniform enforcement of immigration laws and argued that officer discretion was the least restrictive way to advance it. It also argued that worshippers’ enforcement fears were incidental effects of neutral, generally applicable government action.

The religious plaintiffs argued in their own brief that armed enforcement in sacred spaces burdened communal worship, including Quaker pacifist beliefs and Sikh religious practice. They reported that congregants stayed home after the policy changed, reducing attendance among immigrants and nonimmigrants alike.

The plaintiffs also reported reduced volunteering and participation in food pantries, clothing shelters and legal services.

A separate Massachusetts preliminary injunction in New England Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America v. Department of Homeland Security defined its protected plaintiffs as the New England, Greater Milwaukee, Southwest California, Southwest Texas and Sierra Pacific synods, American Baptist Churches USA, Alliance of Baptists, Metropolitan Community Churches and their member churches, congregations and meetings. The order covered identified worship places, adjacent facilities used for central religious education or ministry, and adjacent grounds owned, rented, leased, occupied or operated by the worship place.

The Massachusetts injunction barred immigration-enforcement action inside identified protected areas absent an immediate threat to human life or safety, and near them absent either that emergency or prior approval. Its near-area rule reached within 100 feet of a doorway, gate or other clearly marked entrance to a protected area. Unauthorized presence in the United States, by itself, did not qualify as an emergency under the order.

Prior approval required an individualized decision by a supervisory official at ICE or CBP headquarters, considering ways to minimize interference with access to worship. Absent an emergency, the injunction also prohibited checkpoints or other barriers directed at people traveling to or from a protected area.

The Massachusetts order expressly preserved arrests or searches authorized by an administrative or judicial warrant. DHS appealed the February 13, 2026 preliminary injunction to the First Circuit on April 14, 2026. The two religious orders cannot be substituted for each other: their defined coverage and restrictions differ. An exception to an injunction also does not, by itself, resolve every question about lawful private entry.

An appeal or a later district-court order can change the protection an institution receives. Confirm any later modification or stay in the relevant court docket before relying on an injunction for a particular site.

Courthouse judgments restored earlier restrictions

ICE’s May 27, 2025 memorandum, Civil Immigration Enforcement Actions in or Near Courthouses, superseded its January 21, 2025 Interim Guidance: Civil Immigration Enforcement Actions in or near Courthouses.

The May memorandum’s target categories included national-security or public-safety threats, people with criminal convictions, gang members, people who had not complied with removal orders and people who unlawfully reentered after removal. It also permitted case-by-case enforcement against other people encountered, including accompanying family members or friends and witnesses. Its civil-enforcement authority was therefore not confined to defendants in criminal cases.

The guidance generally avoided courts or areas wholly devoted to noncriminal proceedings, such as family and small-claims courts, but allowed operationally necessary action with prior approval from a designated ICE director or special agent in charge. A general instruction to avoid those courts is different from an unconditional prohibition.

On June 23, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California vacated ICE’s January and May courthouse-arrest policies and the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s 2025 courthouse-enforcement policy. The remedy set aside the policies themselves, rather than limiting relief to individual plaintiffs.

The California court said vacatur reinstated ICE’s 2021 and EOIR’s 2023 guidance, which authorized courthouse arrests in defined circumstances. The government appealed, and the California district court denied its motion to stay the judgment on July 10, 2026.

On September 30, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the January and May courthouse guidance vacated to the extent it rescinded the April 2021 guidance for civil enforcement in or near immigration courts. That judgment concerned immigration courts, rather than arrests at every courthouse.

The earlier ICE and CBP memorandum, Civil Immigration Enforcement Actions in or near Courthouses, permitted specified security and emergency circumstances, including imminent physical harm, hot pursuit of a public-safety threat and imminent destruction of criminal evidence. Without hot pursuit, action against a public-safety threat required no safe alternative location, or enforcement at such a location being too difficult, plus advance approval from a designated senior official.

Restoring that guidance changes the conditions for civil enforcement; it does not turn an immigration-court appearance into an absolute guarantee against arrest. The later appellate stay status of the California ruling was not verified for this article. Check the relevant court docket for a later stay or modification before relying on either courthouse ruling.

Schools and hospitals retain other legal duties

All children have equal access to free public education regardless of their or their parents’ immigration status, as California’s attorney general explains in K-12 school guidance. This is a right to education, rather than an exemption from immigration enforcement.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) gives everyone in the United States appropriate emergency screening and, when an emergency condition exists, stabilization or an appropriate transfer at hospital emergency departments receiving Medicare funds. The duty to provide emergency care and the legal conditions for an arrest are separate obligations.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) permits disclosure of education records without consent to comply with a lawfully issued subpoena or judicial order.

California’s official healthcare guide explains that the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects patient health information with exceptions, including circumstances in which disclosure to law enforcement is permitted but generally not required.

California’s healthcare guidance distinguishes nonpublic treatment or health-information areas and other restricted spaces, and describes state access restrictions with exceptions for legal requirements, judicial warrants or court orders and obtaining care for someone in custody. Those California rules illustrate an additional layer of protection; they should not be assumed to be identical in every state.

California’s model healthcare policies direct information requests to a designated medical director, administrator or legal counsel and call for training staff in the facility’s procedures. The distinction between a public waiting area, a restricted treatment space and a patient’s records can change what the same officer may lawfully obtain.

For a particular location, the useful starting point is its governing order and access policy, rather than a generic sensitive-locations list. Check the order’s named parties and covered places, the actions it restricts, and its warrant and emergency exceptions. The name of the building is only the beginning of that inquiry.