By admin 
California on Thursday asked a federal court to bar immigration agents from detaining people at state courthouses, filing its 100th lawsuit against the second Trump administration in less than two years.
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In the complaint filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Attorney General Rob Bonta said that immigration detentions at courthouses in California have spiked in recent months despite a court order in a different case barring the practice. Immigration violations are civil infractions, not crimes, and both common law and state statutes bar such arrests at courthouses.
“Federal officers are carrying out disruptive, often violent, civil immigration enforcement arrests without regard for the impacts on the administration of justice,” Bonta said in a news conference announcing the lawsuit.
Scaring people from court
In one case, Bonta said, agents refused to show a warrant or let a man speak with his attorney, who was already present. In another, armed agents physically carried a man out of a Rancho Cucamonga courthouse and placed him in an unmarked Sport Utility Vehicle, the attorney general said.
“Federal agents have targeted and apprehended individuals in courthouse hallways, in lobbies, in parking lots,” Bonta said. “These are the kinds of tactics and practices they are engaged in.”
Courthouse arrests for alleged immigration violations began in May 2025, under new guidelines issued for agents of Immigration and Customs enforcement, or ICE, the lawsuit says. A year later, in June, a federal court ruled that the guideline was illegal, but the practice continued, Bonta said in the state’s complaint.
Over the following three months, about 60 people were detained at state courthouses in California, according to the complaint.
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Such actions are scaring people away from coming to court, whether as witnesses, defendants or observers, Bonta said, and amount to a blatant abuse of power.
More than one suit per week
Bonta has filed more than a lawsuit per week in the 90 weeks of Trump’s second term. Such actions have been expensive, costing the state more than $30 million last year and requiring a workload equivalent to roughly 99 full-time employees, according to a previous investigation by The Bee.
But the attorney general said the expenditures have been worth it, salvaging billions in state funding that the administration had sought to claw back, and protecting the rights of the state and its residents.
“These 100 lawsuits are a reflection of just how far our federal government has strayed from the principles on which this country was founded,” Bonta said Thursday.
The lawsuit — and the milestone — drew a sharp response from the White House.
“Instead of bragging about filing frivolous lawsuits against the Trump administration, the California Attorney General should focus on addressing problems in his own state — like the countless criminal illegal aliens extreme Democrats allow to roam free,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in an email.
The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the administration in more than 25 cases, she said, while lower court rulings against its policies were no more than “lawless injunctions.”
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This story was originally published October 15, 2026 at 12:09 PM.