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By Billal Rahman
Immigration Reporter
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A federal judge has ruled that U.S. Marshals lack the legal authority and required training to arrest or detain criminal defendants in Washington, D.C.'s local court system for suspected civil immigration violations, in a setback for the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts.
The case centered on a man identified in court records as N.S., who was detained by U.S. Marshals in January 2020 after a D.C. judge ordered him released following a criminal court appearance. According to a 21-page opinion by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Marshals held him on an ICE detainer until immigration officers arrived to take custody of him.
The lawsuit later became a class action challenging the Marshals Service's practice of detaining criminal defendants for suspected civil immigration violations. In 2021, a federal court barred the practice, but that injunction was later vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after an intervening Supreme Court ruling limited the availability of classwide injunctions in certain immigration cases.
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The appeals court nevertheless agreed that Marshals lacked authority to arrest N.S. because they had not received the training required under federal immigration regulations and sent the case back to the district court to consider what relief remained available.
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Newsweek has contacted the Department of Justice for comment via email.
The Trump administration has enlisted multiple federal agencies such as the FBI, DEA and U.S. Marshals Service to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in carrying out mass immigration arrests, deploying personnel and resources from across the federal government to expand the scale and capacity of immigration enforcement operations.
ICE averaged roughly 1,474 arrests per day in the first 11 days of July, up from more than 1,300 a day in June, while the detention population rose to 65,765 people, its highest level since 68,289 on February 7 and approaching the record of 70,766 set on January 25, according to agency data.
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On remand, the government argued that the case was largely moot because Marshals had received immigration-related training and because a January 2025 order issued by then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamin C. Huffman authorized them to perform certain immigration-enforcement functions.
Lamberth rejected those arguments, finding that the January 2025 order did not legally authorize U.S. Marshals to carry out civil immigration arrests.
The order sought to give Marshals the authority to perform functions of immigration officers, including apprehending people suspected of violating immigration laws, but the judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could not expand that authority through an internal memorandum. According to the opinion, the move effectively changed federal regulations without going through the notice-and-comment rulemaking process required under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Lamberth said that the 2025 order "did not successfully amend the regulation and cannot constitute a legitimate delegation of authority to the U.S. Marshals to make civil immigration arrests."
The court also found that the government failed to demonstrate that Marshals had received the immigration training required by federal regulations. According to the ruling, Marshals assigned to D.C. Superior Court received virtual instruction from ICE attorneys covering civil immigration authorities and an overview of constitutional issues related to immigration enforcement.
But the government did not show that the training was "substantially equivalent" to the immigration law enforcement courses referenced in federal regulations, the judge said.
Lamberth denied the government's motion to dismiss and entered a declaratory judgment stating that U.S. Marshals lack the legal authority and necessary training to detain or arrest criminal defendants in D.C. Superior Court for suspected civil immigration violations.
Concerns over federal agents’ training and use of force have grown after a series of deadly immigration enforcement shootings, including the January killings of Renee Nicle Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, the July shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas, and the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Fitzpatrick and Dave Siminoff.
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