Justice Department Sues Columbus Municipal Court Over Rule Limiting Immigration Arrests

The U.S. Department of Justice sued the Franklin County Municipal Court in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday, accusing the local court and two officials of unlawfully interfering with federal immigration enforcement through a newly adopted courthouse rule.

The lawsuit stands out because it is not a challenge to a federal immigration policy. Instead, the Justice Department is directly targeting a municipal court rule that it says blocks federal officers from making immigration arrests at or near the courthouse, setting up a federal-state clash over who controls law enforcement activity around local courts.

According to a Justice Department press release issued Aug. 25 by its Office of Public Affairs and Civil Division, the defendants are the Franklin County Municipal Court, the court’s administrative and presiding judge, and its director of security. DOJ is challenging the court’s Rule 2.10, which the department says “blocks federal officials from arresting aliens at or near the courthouse” and “purports to shield aliens from being lawfully detained at or around the courthouse and to impose criminal and civil liability for violations.”

The department called the rule an “illegal attempt to regulate the federal government” and said it “threatens the safety and effectiveness of federal operations.” Those claims are allegations in a newly filed lawsuit. The source material provided for this report did not include the full complaint, the full text of Rule 2.10, or an immediate public response from the Franklin County Municipal Court or local officials.

The case is part of a broader push by DOJ’s Civil Division against state and local measures the department says hinder federal enforcement. In the release, DOJ said Attorney General Todd Blanche directed the division to identify state and local laws, policies and practices that facilitate violations of federal law or impede lawful federal operations. The department described the Ohio suit as the latest in a series of such cases.

“Today the Department sued yet another local entity that seeks to thwart the will of Congress by regulating when and where Federal law enforcement does its job, all in the name of protecting criminal aliens who violate our Nation’s laws,” Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. said in the release.

Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, who leads the Civil Division, said the rule “obstructs federal law enforcement and facilitates evasion of federal law by dangerous criminal aliens, despite Congress’s direction that federal agents detain and remove them.”

Immigration enforcement is primarily a federal responsibility. Federal law, including 8 U.S.C. Section 1357, outlines immigration officers’ arrest powers. The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause also provides that federal law overrides conflicting state or local rules.

That legal backdrop has fueled a wider national fight over arrests at courthouses and other judicial facilities. In separate cases this year in New York and California, federal judges limited or placed conditions on some Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in or around certain immigration-court facilities.

The Ohio lawsuit takes a different path. Rather than asking a court to curb federal arrest practices, the Justice Department is asking a court to stop a local court from enforcing a rule that DOJ says restricts federal officers. That makes the case an unusually direct test of how far a local court can go in setting courthouse-related rules when federal immigration agents say those rules interfere with their authority.