On Tuesday, May 19, 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a man at 26 Federal Plaza, one of three Manhattan buildings housing immigration courts, the day after a federal judge ordered such arrests paused. The man, Vinely Alexander Castillo-Norales, 21, came to the United States from Honduras as a child pursuing asylum and has no criminal convictions, according to a court filing by the New York Legal Assistance Group. He was detained after a court check-in and released a few hours later.
The order came from U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York, who ruled on Monday, May 18 to halt ICE arrests at the immigration courts at 26 Federal Plaza, 201 Varick Street and 290 Broadway while the lawsuit proceeded, with narrow exceptions such as threats to national security, an imminent risk of violence, or hot pursuit. Castel reversed his own earlier ruling after Justice Department lawyers told him in March that a May 2025 ICE courthouse-arrest memo they had relied on did not apply to immigration courts, correcting what they called a “material mistaken statement of fact.”
NYLAG attorneys said the arrest showed ICE's “utter contempt for the rule of law,” and Rep. Dan Goldman called it a “blatant violation of a court order.” DHS said, “ICE did NOT violate any court orders,” and added, “Nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them, especially illegal alien gang members.” DHS accused Castillo-Norales of gang membership but did not cite any conviction. A NYLAG spokesperson responded, “Arresting anyone on unfounded claims subverts the rule of law.”
The arrests did not stop. Courthouse News reported on July 17 that ICE had made at least six arrests in Manhattan immigration courts since Castel's order. The latest was Matar Ndiaye, a Bronx resident detained July 16, 2026, after attending his asylum master-calendar hearing at 290 Broadway and being given a new court date. ICE argued that alternative arrest locations were unsafe because of possible anti-ICE protesters, and Castel ordered the government to explain by July 31 why it kept making courthouse arrests despite his ruling.
Update (October 2, 2026): In a 36-page ruling reported October 1, Castel granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs, finding ICE's courthouse-arrest practice arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act and vacating the 2025 policy as applied to immigration courthouses, which leaves the earlier Biden-era limits in place. He wrote that ICE had “offered no explanation of why the exercise of unfettered discretion by ICE officers with no guidance whatsoever was a better option” than its previous policy (see A Federal Judge Voids ICE's Courthouse Arrest Rules and Its Six-Fold Detention Extension, Finding the Arrest Rules 'Devoid of Rational Explanation').
Correction (October 2, 2026): The entry dated the arrest May 20 and Castel's order May 19; AP, HuffPost and Courthouse News place the order on Monday, May 18 and the arrest on Tuesday, May 19, and the date and title now reflect that (the title previously said “less than a day after”). It said Courthouse News reported “two federal court orders” barring the practice and that advocates asked the court to intervene; the article does not mention two orders, and it was Castel who asked the government to explain the continuing arrests. A paraphrase of DHS defending arrests in “civil immigration court” was replaced with DHS's actual statement.