Jim Hacking

The number of immigrants arrested by ICE who are seeking to have their cases dropped through habeas corpus is approaching 100,000, blowing away the hundreds of cases seen in a normal year. More immigrants than ever before are fighting their arrest and detention by ICE under President Donald Trump, creating new challenges and delays for the immigration courts and a White House focused on swiftly removing as many illegal immigrants as possible before 2029. New data revealed that 93,245 immigration-related habeas corpus cases have been filed in federal court between January 2025 and Nov. 3, 2026, according to a ProPublica tracker. In October alone, nearly 8,000 new habeas cases were filed nationwide. Most cases have been filed in California and Texas, followed by Florida and New Jersey. Filing a habeas petition from detention is a civil way to ask a federal district court judge to order one’s release or mandate a bond hearing. Habeas petitions request a non-immigration judge to order an illegal immigrant in detention to be brought before that court, as opposed to an immigration court, and the government attorney at ICE must defend why the immigrant in question must be detained. In effect, habeas corpus defendants claim their detention through immigration court proceedings is illegal. Detainees have a constitutional right to file a habeas petition, and because some ICE arrests are based on administrative warrants, not judicial warrants, immigration attorneys have successfully challenged the grounds for detention in many cases. Although immigration courts are intended to decide immigration cases, habeas cases are being filed in federal court, where more sympathetic judges often rule that the federal government cannot detain people indefinitely without a judicial warrant.