NEW YORK — A federal judge in New York on Thursday ordered President Trump’s Justice Department to preserve its communications with Immigration and Customs Enforcement after prosecutors said ICE had misrepresented its authority to arrest people in immigration court.

In a brief order, Manhattan Federal Judge Kevin Castel said the prosecutor’s office must also inform ICE officials, the agency’s legal team, and others to preserve all past, present and future communications about a May 2025 memo wrongly used to justify arresting people in immigration courts.

Castel is presiding over an ongoing lawsuit against ICE — brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union and various civil rights groups and community organizations — that accuses the agency of unlawfully targeting people for deportation when they turn up to immigration court hearings, denying them the chance to pursue their claims.

The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which has been defending the government in the lawsuit, earlier this week informed Castel that a memo they had relied on in the case to justify the practice — at ICE’s direction — did not authorize such procedures, despite the agency repeatedly asserting otherwise.

The admission means ICE has not provided any legal justification for immigration court arrests in New York and across the country over the last year amid the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown, lawyers for the NYCLU told the Daily News Wednesday.

Over the past year at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, plainclothes agents for ICE and Customs and Border Patrol — wearing masks and balaclavas —have taken more than a thousand people into custody. Children have been among those swept up, if not separated from their detained parents.

Many of those targeted were on their way out of the federal facility after appearing before immigration judges, who set return dates for their asylum applications and indicated they weren’t at risk of imminent deportation.

Immigrant rights advocates have criticized the practice as inhumane and say ICE has cruelly targeted people following the rules by turning up to their court dates to meet quotas.

Castel, a George W. Bush appointee, last year denied relief to African Communities Together and other groups who brought the suit by allowing ICE to continue making arrests in immigration courts after prosecutors referred him to the May 2025 ICE memo.

In the prosecution’s letter to the judge Tuesday acknowledging he had been misinformed, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tomoko Onozawa said the judge would need to be re-briefed and to revisit his rulings. He said the “factual error” was not caused by a lack of diligence on the part of prosecutors, but an unnamed ICE attorney.

“The undersigned were specifically informed by ICE that the 2025 ICE guidance applied to immigration courthouse arrests,” he wrote, adding that prosecutors ran every brief in the case by ICE before filing.

It’s unclear what the revelation will mean for people who’ve been detained in immigration courts — or how it will impact the Trump administration’s deportation strategies. The judge on Thursday granted a request from the groups who filed the suit for two weeks to respond to the development.

The News contacted DHS representatives for comment.

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