Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought to arrest at least 46 “targets” at downtown Pittsburgh courthouses between April 21 and Jan. 2, according to emails the agency sent to the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office.
In the emails, obtained through a public records request, ICE officials notified the Sheriff’s Office of planned arrests, sharing the name, date and country of birth of each “target,” along with the expected time and location of their court procedure. At least once, the agency shared a photograph of the person they sought to arrest.
The records reflect eight months of detentions at the courthouses, as President Donald Trump ratcheted his second-term immigration crackdown. ICE targeted 32 people at Pittsburgh Municipal Court and 14 at the Court of Common Pleas, per the communications, which do not reflect how many of the named targets were ultimately arrested or detained. ICE did not respond to questions.
Sheriff Kevin Kraus, a Democrat, requested that Homeland Security and ICE notify his office when they plan to be in a court facility “so that our deputies can carry out their mission of safety and decorum inside of those facilities and ensure that law enforcement operations are not compromised or in any way obstructed,” wrote spokesperson Mike Manko in a statement.
“Beyond that, our deputies have no involvement in immigration enforcement,” Manko wrote.
ICE arrested 1,328 people across the Pittsburgh region in 2025, according to data released by the Data Deportation Project and analyzed by Pittsburgh’s Public Source. That figure is nearly four times the number of arrests the agency made in the same region, defined as a 50-mile radius from downtown Pittsburgh, in 2024. Regional arrests reached peaks in November and January, each month seeing more than 180 arrests.
On at least one occasion, an agent from Customs and Border Protection was involved in a planned arrest at the Court of Common Pleas, according to the ICE emails. (CBP agents have jurisdiction within 100 miles of the U.S. border, however the agency’s scope has expanded dramatically under the second Trump Administration, and it has deployed to cities including Chicago and Minneapolis.)
At least one person was targeted during a proceeding at the Allegheny County Mental Health Court, and another at an Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) hearing, which is reserved for nonviolent, first-time offenders.
The records indicate that the Sheriff’s Office is regularly notified by ICE about planned arrests at the courthouses. The majority of the emails do not include a substantive response from Allegheny County Sheriff deputies, and do not indicate that deputies at the courthouses assisted in arresting the people ICE sought.
“Thank you all very much for your cooperation. We were able to take this subject into custody without incident,” one email from ICE reads, referring to an arrest at Pittsburgh Municipal Court on April 22.
The Sheriff’s Office has maintained that it does not cooperate with ICE.
In a letter to Allegheny County Council President Patrick Catena and Chief Clerk Jared Barker on Feb. 19, Sheriff Kraus wrote that his office does not have any agreement with ICE, and that his deputy sheriffs are “not authorized to take part in immigration enforcement.” Kraus added that court facilities are public buildings that federal agents have access to, and docket sheets, which detail court proceedings, are also public.
Last April, as the emails began to arrive from ICE, President Judge Susan Evashavik DiLucente distributed a memo to administrative judges that laid out procedures for when ICE seeks to make an arrest in the courthouse, noting sheriff’s deputies would detain individuals for ICE, bring them “out of public view” and transfer them to ICE custody. The Sheriff’s Office said in a statement to Public Source that practice was never implemented. A later memo, circulated by Evashavik DiLucente on June 23, stated that deputies would instead “escort the ICE agents to the person and then escort the person and ICE agents to a non-public area.”
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In March, Allegheny County Council voted to restrict county employees from cooperating with ICE. The bill prohibits assisting ICE or border patrol “in any capacity” with enforcement operations.
The number of people targeted in the emails between ICE and the sheriff are consistent with what public defenders are observing in the courthouses, said Andy Howard, Allegheny County’s interim chief public defender.
“Public defenders are spotting ICE in Common Pleas Court and Pittsburgh Municipal Court often several times per week,” Howard said, adding agents seem particularly interested in maintaining presence near the Formal Arraignment Office and at points of entry to the courthouses, like elevators and stairwells.
Howard said most of the defendants his office has seen seized by ICE were charged with “very low-level” misdemeanors.
“ICE has been seen seizing victims and witnesses of crimes who were summoned to court – which has the problematic impact of deterring victims, witnesses and defendants from seeking assistance from the police and the legal system,” he said.
Quinn Glabicki is the Climate and Environment Reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached on instagram @quinnglabicki.
This story was fact-checked by Jamese Platt.
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