SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has sharply rebuked the Trump administration for attempting to evade a court order requiring humane conditions in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, rejecting government arguments that sought to narrow the scope of an existing injunction governing medical care, hygiene and sleep for noncitizen detainees.
According to Courthouse News Service, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts on Wednesday denied the government’s motion to stay a preliminary injunction governing short-term detention conditions at ICE’s San Francisco field office at 630 Sansome St., ruling that the order applies broadly to all areas used for short-term confinement and is not limited to a single floor of the building .
In a five-page order issued Dec. 31, Pitts emphasized that conditions of short-term detention “must not be ‘punitive,’” a central constitutional question underlying the case. The injunction, he wrote, requires ICE to maintain detention conditions at “the constitutional minimums required by the Fifth Amendment” for noncitizens held in short-term hold rooms at the facility .
The government had argued that the injunction applied only to hold rooms on the sixth floor of the San Francisco facility, where ICE previously housed detainees, and not to rooms on the fifth floor, where detainees were moved after the injunction took effect. Pitts rejected that position, writing that nothing in the court’s order “suggest[s] that it applies only to the sixth floor,” and clarified that the injunction covers all rooms in the building that are “primarily used for … short-term confinement” of noncitizens following arrest and prior to transfer to long-term detention .
U.S. Attorney Doug Johns, arguing on behalf of the government, told the court that after the injunction was issued, the sixth-floor detention space “went dark,” prompting ICE to move detention operations to the fifth floor. Pitts responded that such operational changes did not alter the scope of the injunction, which applies building-wide to all qualifying hold rooms used for short-term detention .
Attorneys for the detainees argued that ICE’s post-injunction practices amounted to an effort to avoid compliance. Marissa Hatton, representing the class of noncitizens held at the facility, described the detention spaces as a “black site,” asserting that detainees lacked access to attorneys because of the absence of phones and the denial of in-person legal visits. Hatton accused the government of attempting to “avoid complying with a valid court order,” stating that class members “have suffered too long in cruel detention conditions.”
Pitts also addressed ICE’s practice of transferring some detainees from the San Francisco field office to a satellite facility in Stockton before placing them in long-term detention. While the Stockton facility may fall outside the literal terms of the injunction, Pitts warned that using it to continue subjecting detainees to unconstitutional conditions could still violate the injunction’s purpose .
Citing recent Ninth Circuit precedent, Pitts cautioned that “a dubiously literal interpretation of the injunction … designed to evade the injunction’s goals” could support a finding of contempt, even if “the strict letter of the injunction was not violated.” He stressed, however, that the court was not making factual findings about conditions on the fifth floor or at the Stockton facility due to a lack of evidence in the record .
The government appealed the preliminary injunction to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and sought a stay pending appeal, arguing that Pitts had improperly expanded the injunction during a Dec. 22 status conference without proper notice under federal procedural rules. Pitts rejected that argument, stating that the court “neither substantively modified that relief nor granted new relief,” but merely clarified the scope of the existing injunction .
Because the government’s arguments were based on what Pitts described as the “erroneous assertion” that the court had issued new injunctive relief, he concluded that the government had shown no likelihood of success on appeal. As a result, the motion for a stay pending appeal was denied in full .
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