Released by court order, arrested again: ICE re-detains immigrants who won habeas petitions in the US

Immigrants in the United States who have been granted release from detention after winning habeas corpus petitions in court are being re-arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). At least 20 such cases nationwide in the last year have been identified from court records, attorneys and media reports.

Increasing arrests and detentions have led immigrants to file more than 91,000 habeas petitions challenging their detention, according to research by ProPublica. More petitions have been filed since 25 January than during the past three presidential administrations, including Donald Trump's first term, combined, the outlet found.

A petition of habeas corpus — Latin for 'you shall have a body' — challenges in federal court the government's right to hold someone in custody while their main legal case is proceeding. But in a new development, people are winning their release only to find themselves quickly detained again.

Bridget Pranzatelli, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, said there has been a very sharp increase in people released on habeas petitions only to be very rapidly re-detained, often in violation of the federal court's order.

One of Pranzatelli's clients, Akram Mahmoud Omar, a 77-year-old Palestinian man who suffered a heart attack while detained in 'Camp 57', the ICE detention facility within Louisiana's notorious state prison in Angola, was arrested again by ICE within 10 days of being released following a habeas petition.

In Minnesota, seven immigrants were re-detained before even exiting the Whipple federal building detention facility on the outskirts of Minneapolis. Daniel Suitor, attorney to two of the men, said he did not think being taken out of a building and directly into the arms of four or more officers complied with the court's order.

Courts are taking notice. In an October ruling, the 10th US circuit court of appeals in Colorado denied the government's attempt to dismiss a habeas petition; the government had argued it had the power to re-detain the petitioner, and the court noted a previous demonstrated pattern of re-detaining non-citizens who had been granted habeas relief.

In Louisiana, in the case of another Pranzatelli client, Ibrahim Mohammed, a federal judge held a senior federal immigration official in contempt of court for violating orders demanding Mohammed's release after he had been re-arrested three times by ICE. Two other federal judges, in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, have also held federal immigration authorities in contempt or threatened to do so.

Attorneys believe some re-detentions are connected to the Trump administration's push to deport people to third countries. Susanna Booth, senior attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights in Washington DC, said the practice is tethered to the explosion of third-country agreements with primarily African nations in the past four months.

The Trump administration is increasingly sending immigrants who cannot be removed to their home countries — either because the country will not accept them or they have protections from being deported there — to another country entirely, where they do not hold citizenship and often have no ties. In the past, these immigrants were essentially safe from deportation.

More than 25,000 non-citizens have been deported from the US to countries that are not their own, despite potentially facing torture or persecution. Often they are being incarcerated in prisons or detained in secured hotels and pressured to return to their home countries, which human rights experts say violates the Convention Against Torture.

Booth said that if someone wins a petition but the government then says it can simply send them to Liberia, it feels like playing a game with every country in the world.

In the current climate, attorneys are eager for judges to grant habeas petitions that prevent the government from easily re-detaining and deporting a client. Tess Hellgren, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, said a court may require the government to give at least three days' notice if it tries to remove a person again — which may not sound like much but matters when the government may be trying to put someone immediately on a flight out of the US.

In September, an appeals court ruled that the Trump administration had to provide sufficient notice of third-country deportations and allow immigrants to contest their removals. Shortly after, the six-justice conservative majority of the Supreme Court granted an emergency stay of the ruling, without issuing an explanation, allowing the administration to continue quickly deporting immigrants to third countries.

Louisiana immigration attorney Joseph Giardina had two Egyptian clients protected under withholding of removal who were re-detained weeks after being released on habeas and threatened with deportation, but were then granted asylum. Giardina said the administration knows the Biden-era rule was the only reason they were not granted asylum and is trying its hardest to deport them as quickly as possible to another country.

Yet many people are being re-arrested with no apparent plans for deportation, leaving them stranded in detention indefinitely. Courts are also taking months to adjudicate the thousands of habeas cases, particularly in Louisiana and Texas, where many detention centers are located. Jonah Eaton, an UnLocal litigation attorney who has filed habeas suits, said lawyers may win the battle but lose the war, because in the long run the government will still be able to arrest people and hold them for long periods of time.