Sensitive Locations: Where Can ICE Make Arrests?

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Federal policy used to tell immigration officers to avoid enforcement, to the fullest extent possible, in or near “protected areas” such as schools, hospitals and places of worship. That sensitive locations policy was rescinded on January 20, 2025. The guidance that replaced it tells officers to use discretion and common sense in place of fixed rules, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leaves case-by-case decisions near those places to its supervisors.

Ending the location policy did not give officers unrestricted access to private spaces. For example, DHS regulations allow an immigration officer inspecting a business to enter its public areas, but require a judicial warrant or the owner’s consent to enter nonpublic areas and question people about immigration status.

The national policy changed

On January 20, 2025, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman issued a memorandum that rescinded the protected-areas guidelines Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had issued on October 27, 2021. 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. An ICE memorandum of January 31, 2025, left case-by-case decisions about whether, where and when to enforce near protected areas to supervisors: 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.

What the withdrawn policy meant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.

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 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 an emergency, officers needed advance approval from headquarters or an official it designated; when an emergency made that impossible, they were to consult headquarters or that official afterward.

The memo said it created no right or benefit that anyone could enforce at law. Calling an area protected never meant that it was immune from every immigration action.

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.

Some lower courts have ruled, CRS reports, that ICE agents violated the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures, by forcing their way into homes without a judicial warrant when no recognized exception applied, such as the owner’s consent or an emergency involving risk of harm or destruction of evidence.

At a Senate oversight hearing, Senator Richard Blumenthal pressed Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, about a policy memo Lyons wrote. According to the senator’s February 13, 2026 account of the hearing, the memo authorizes agents to enter homes without a judicial warrant to make civil immigration arrests. Lyons cited a 2007 case, United States v. Lucas, which he said authorizes entering a home on an administrative warrant to catch a fugitive, and Blumenthal disputed that reading.

In Lucas, the Eighth Circuit upheld the conviction of an escaped state prisoner; five judges concluded that the entry did not violate his rights because his privacy was limited by his escapee status, the officers had a valid administrative warrant and they had reasonable cause to believe he was in the apartment.

DHS regulations bar an immigration officer conducting an inspection from entering the nonpublic areas of a business to question people about immigration status without a judicial warrant or the owner’s consent. The officer may enter publicly accessible parts of a business without a warrant or consent. Permission to stand in a public lobby is different from permission to enter a restricted room.

Federal law allows an immigration arrest without a warrant in two circumstances: when an officer sees a person entering or trying to enter the country unlawfully, or has reason to believe a person is in the country unlawfully and is 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

Quaker meetings and yearly meetings, Sikh Temple Sacramento and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship sued to block the new policy in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The federal district court in Maryland issued a preliminary injunction, a temporary order that applies while the 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.

In his concurrence, Judge Agee explained that the injunction incorporated the old policy’s exceptions for warrantless enforcement and its approval rules: emergencies allowed action before approval, while action without an emergency required prior headquarters approval or approval from its delegate.

The plaintiffs invoked the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which restricts substantial government burdens on religious practice, including burdens caused by generally applicable rules. When a substantial burden is shown, the government must show a compelling interest and the least restrictive means of achieving it, a test known as strict scrutiny.

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. Less than two weeks after the new policy took effect, one congregation reported a 66 percent drop in English-class attendance, which the brief attributed to fears of immigration enforcement.

On August 18, 2026, the Fourth Circuit, a federal appeals court, affirmed the Maryland injunction. 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.

A separate preliminary injunction, issued in Massachusetts on February 13, 2026 in New England Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America v. Department of Homeland Security, covered a different set of plaintiffs: 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 unless there was an immediate threat to human life or safety. Near those areas, it barred action unless there was 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 Maryland and Massachusetts 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 an injunction, so check the court docket for any modification or stay before relying on one for a particular site.

Courthouse judgments restored earlier restrictions

Courthouses have had their own ICE guidance. A May 27, 2025 ICE memorandum on civil immigration enforcement in or near courthouses replaced interim guidance issued on January 21, 2025.

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.

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.

On June 23, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California vacated, or set aside, ICE’s January and May courthouse-arrest policies and a 2025 courthouse-enforcement policy of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which runs the immigration courts. The ruling set aside the policies themselves, not just their use against the people who sued.

The California court said that setting the policies aside 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.

The California court identified the earlier ICE guidance as the April 27, 2021 memorandum on civil immigration enforcement in or near courthouses.

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

That April 2021 memorandum permitted enforcement in 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, officers could act against a public-safety threat only when no safe alternative location existed or acting at one would be too difficult, and only with 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 rulings and appeals described here are dated; check the court dockets for later modifications or stays before relying on an order.

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 law, the state’s healthcare guidance says, bars facilities from allowing immigration-enforcement access to nonpublic areas where patients receive care or discuss health information, unless the law requires it or the officer has a judicial warrant or court order. The law does not prevent immigration authorities from entering to get care for someone in their 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.

In guidance issued on February 14, 2025, New York’s governor and attorney general told private and nonprofit facilities, including healthcare facilities and houses of worship, that staff do not have to admit immigration officers to areas closed to the public unless the officers show a valid judicial warrant. New York also publishes separate guidance for school districts. The state warns that this guidance has not been updated for later laws affecting state and local involvement with federal immigration enforcement.

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.