Immigrants who secure their freedom from US immigration detention through habeas corpus petitions are increasingly being arrested again by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), raising concerns among lawyers and prompting fresh scrutiny from federal courts.
An investigation by The Guardian identified at least 20 cases across the United States in the past year in which immigrants were detained again after obtaining release through habeas corpus proceedings. The cases were documented through court records, reports from lawyers and media accounts.
The development comes amid a sharp rise in legal challenges to immigration detention under President Donald Trump’s administration. Research by ProPublica found that more than 91,000 habeas corpus petitions have been filed by immigrants seeking to challenge their detention.
According to the investigation, the number of petitions filed since January 25 exceeds the combined total recorded during the previous three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term.
A habeas corpus petition allows a person to ask a federal court to examine whether the government has the legal authority to keep them in custody while their main immigration case is pending.
However, immigration lawyers say some detainees are being taken back into custody shortly after courts order their release.
“We’ve seen a very, very sharp increase in people who are released on habeas petitions, only to be very rapidly re-detained, often in violation of the federal court’s order,” said Bridget Pranzatelli, an attorney with the National Immigration Project.
One of her clients, 77-year-old Palestinian man Akram Mahmoud Omar, was among those affected. Omar, who suffered a heart attack while held at Camp 57, an ICE detention facility located within Louisiana’s Angola state prison, was arrested again less than 10 days after securing his release through a habeas petition.
The Intercept first reported his case.
A similar incident occurred in Minnesota, where seven immigrants were reportedly taken back into custody before they could leave the Whipple federal building detention facility near Minneapolis.
Daniel Suitor, who represents two of the affected men, questioned whether the action complied with the court’s directive.
“I don’t think being taken out of a building and directly into the arms of four or more officers complies with the court’s order,” he said in a phone interview.
Federal judges have also begun responding to the repeated arrests. In October, the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado rejected the government’s attempt to have a habeas petition dismissed on the basis that immigration authorities had the power to detain the petitioner again.
The court pointed to the government’s previous “demonstrated pattern of re-detaining” non-citizens who had obtained relief through habeas proceedings.
In Louisiana, another client represented by Pranzatelli, Ibrahim Mohammed, was arrested three times after being released. A federal judge subsequently found a senior immigration official in contempt of court and ordered Mohammed’s release.
The case was first reported by the Banner. Two other federal judges, in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, have also held immigration authorities in contempt or warned that they could face such sanctions.
Some immigration lawyers believe the renewed arrests are linked to the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrants to countries other than their countries of origin.
Susanna Booth, a senior attorney at Washington-based Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, attributed the trend to the expansion of agreements with African countries to receive deportees.
“It’s really tethered to the explosion of third country agreements with primarily African nations in the past four months,” she said.
Under the administration’s approach, immigrants who cannot be deported to their home countries because those countries refuse to receive them or because they have legal protection against removal may be sent to third countries where they have no citizenship or established connections.
Lawyers say such individuals were previously largely protected from deportation under those circumstances.
“They just can’t be removed to the countries that are listed on the ‘withholding of removal’ order, but they can be removed to third countries,” Ahmed said. “And that has always been the law. It’s just that it wasn’t practiced.”
More than 25,000 non-citizens have reportedly been deported from the US to countries other than their own, despite concerns that some could face persecution or torture.
Human rights experts have raised concerns that some deportees are being held in prisons or secure hotels and pressured to return to their countries of origin, potentially violating the Convention Against Torture.
Booth described the legal difficulties facing immigrants who obtain court protection but remain vulnerable to removal through another country.
“Say you win your petition, but then the government is like ‘Well, that’s fine because then we can just send them to Liberia,’ it just kind of feels like you’re playing Whac-a-Mole with every country in the world,” she said.
Against this background, attorneys are seeking stronger court orders to prevent immigration authorities from immediately taking released clients back into custody or arranging their deportation.
Tess Hellgren, another attorney with the National Immigration Project, said some judges now require the government to provide advance notice before attempting to remove an immigrant who has secured legal relief.
“The court will say, for example, ‘The government needs to give us at least three days’ notice if they’re trying to remove this person again,’” she said.
“It might not sound like much, but that’s actually quite a bit in cases,” she added, explaining that immigration authorities may otherwise attempt to place detainees on flights out of the country almost immediately.
Booth said two of her clients were arrested again and threatened with deportation to African countries with which they had no connection. They were eventually released after she filed fresh habeas petitions.
She added that her legal team now prepares additional petitions in advance, particularly when there is a risk that clients could be transferred to another state. Such transfers, she said, could place their cases before courts with less favourable conditions for obtaining relief.
In September, an appeals court ruled that the Trump administration must give immigrants adequate notice of plans to deport them to third countries and allow them an opportunity to challenge their removal.
However, the Supreme Court’s six-justice conservative majority later granted an emergency stay of the decision without providing an explanation. The move allowed the administration to continue carrying out third-country deportations without the notice requirements imposed by the appeals court.
Another legal development has also affected some immigrants who previously received protection from deportation.
A court overturned a Biden-era policy that had barred most people who entered the US unlawfully through the Mexican border from obtaining asylum. As a result, some immigrants previously granted withholding of removal have become eligible to seek asylum.
Joseph Giardina, an immigration lawyer in Louisiana, said two of his Egyptian clients had been protected from deportation under withholding-of-removal orders.
The men were detained again weeks after their release through habeas proceedings and threatened with deportation. They were subsequently granted asylum.
Giardina said the administration was aware that the earlier policy had prevented the men from obtaining asylum and was now trying to remove them as quickly as possible.
“The Biden-era rule was the only reason they were not granted asylum,” Giardina said, adding that the authorities were “doing their damnedest to deport them as quickly as they possibly can to another country”.
However, lawyers say not every re-arrest appears to be connected to an immediate deportation plan. Some immigrants remain in detention for extended periods without clear indications of when they may be released or removed.
The growing number of habeas cases has also placed pressure on federal courts, with thousands of petitions taking months to resolve, particularly in Louisiana and Texas, where several immigration detention centres are located.
Analyses by Bolts, the New Orleans-based Lens and the Texas Tribune highlighted delays in the handling of the cases.
Lawyers have warned that the repeated arrests and uncertainty surrounding detention are causing additional distress for immigrants and their families, even when they initially succeed in court.
Jonah Eaton, a litigation attorney with UnLocal who has filed habeas petitions for immigration detainees, said legal victories were not necessarily ending the prolonged detention of his clients.
“We can sort of win the battle, but we’re going to lose the war. Because in the long run, they’re still going to be able to do what they want to do, which is arrest people and hold them for long periods of time,” he said.
