Horrific abuse of civil rights. ICE is trying to scare people. People have legal right to protest and to follow / record ICE gang thugs. The ICE gang thugs have no authority to arrect citizens as they do not have police powers. Again are we a free people, do we have rights anymore? Hugs
I am tired of the gaslighting and lies. Blatantly claiming to be following the court’s orders when they clearly are not and giving the middle finger to the courts. Are we a nation of laws or are we now a nation ruled by corrupt gang thugs who as one person in the DOJ said “tell the court to fuck itself”. Where has the Republican Party of law and order gone? When the Democrats are in charge the Republicans sue all the time to block things. Look how many times Biden was blocked by the courts in lawsuits filed by Republicans. How would they have reacted if Biden’s administration just ignored the courts like tRump’s admin is doing? Are we at a crisis point yet? Hugs
Sheer scale of the lawsuits threatens to clog the judicial system
About 700 Justice Department attorneys deployed to represent the government in immigration cases
Hundreds of judges around the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Donald Trump’s administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, a Reuters review of court records found.
The decisions amount to a sweeping legal rebuke of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Yet the administration has continued jailing people indefinitely even after courts ruled the policy was illegal.
“It is appalling that the Government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston of West Virginia, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote last week, ordering the release of a Venezuelan detainee in the state.
Most of the rulings center on the Trump administration’s departure from a nearly three-decade-old interpretation of federal law that immigrants already living in the United States could be released on bond while they pursue their cases in immigration court.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration is “working to lawfully deliver on President Trump’s mandate to enforce federal immigration law.”
SOARING NUMBER OF IMMIGRANT DETAINEES
Under Trump, the number of people in ICE detention reached about 68,000 this month, up about 75% from when Trump took office last year.
A conservative appeals court in New Orleans last week gave the Trump administration a victory in its drive to lock up more immigrants. Just because prior administrations did not fully utilize the law to detain people “does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones wrote in a decision reversing rulings that led to the release of two Mexican men. Both remain free, their lawyer said.
Other appeals courts are set to take up the issue in the coming weeks.
Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said the increase in lawsuits came as “no surprise” – “especially after many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations.”
The department did not respond to more specific questions about the cases and data findings in this story.
With few other legal paths to freedom, immigrant detainees have filed more than 20,200 federal lawsuits demanding their release since Trump took office, a Reuters review of court dockets found, underscoring the sweeping impact of Trump’s policy change.
In at least 4,421 cases, more than 400 federal judges ruled since the beginning of October that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding people illegally as it carries out its mass-deportation campaign, Reuters found.
A chart showing the number of habeas challenges to immigration detention by month
Other cases are pending, have been dismissed because the detainee was released, or were transferred to another judicial district, which would force immigrants to file a new case. Reuters was unable to determine how many cases were moved or re-filed.
Joseph Thomas, an 18-year-old high school student from Venezuela, was arrested during a traffic stop in Wisconsin in late December, while riding with his father, Elias Thomas, on his Walmart delivery route.
The men are asylum seekers who entered the United States in August 2023. Both are authorized to work, their lawyer, Carrie Peltier, said. Peltier said they were stopped for “driving while brown.”
Within a month, judges ordered the release of father and son.
Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz – also a Bush appointee – ruled that Joseph had been detained illegally and ordered his immediate release. In his ruling, he said Joseph was not subject to mandatory detention, and called out a “lack of any evidence that ICE had a warrant when it detained Joseph while he was a passenger in his father’s car.”
U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud, a Trump appointee, ruled that Joseph’s father Elias was eligible for a bond hearing.
“This raises an issue of statutory interpretation that courts in this District have repeatedly considered and rejected, and it will be rejected here as well,” Tostrud wrote in his order.
Joseph is now taking classes online, afraid to return to school.
LANDSLIDE OF LAWSUITS
Habeas corpus – Latin for “you shall have the body” – emerged in the English courts in the 1300s and is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It provides a legal recourse for people the government has detained unlawfully.
Reuters counted habeas lawsuits by gathering the dockets of every publicly filed federal court case over more than two decades from Westlaw, a legal research tool that is a division of Thomson Reuters.
The records, combined with other court filings, offer the most comprehensive view to date of the scale of lawsuits moving through the U.S. justice system and of the defeats for the administration.
Within the span of a few days in January, lawyers filed habeas petitions for Liam Conejo, a five-year-old Ecuadorean boy detained in the driveway of his Minnesota home; a Ukrainian man with a valid temporary humanitarian status who was detained on his way to work as a cable technician; a Salvadoran man married to a U.S. citizen and father of a 3-year-old autistic child who is also a U.S. citizen; an Eritrean hospital worker with refugee status who was arrested after letting agents into his apartment complex and a Venezuelan man who was arrested after dropping off his daughter at school.
None had criminal records.
DIVERTED LAWYERS, VIOLATED ORDERS
The rush of lawsuits is forcing the U.S. Justice Department offices to divert attorneys who would normally prosecute criminal cases to respond to habeas cases.
Using court dockets, Reuters found more than 700 Justice Department attorneys representing the government in immigration cases. Five of the attorneys each appeared on the dockets of more than 1,000 habeas cases.
Partly as a result of that legal logjam, judges have found that the government has left people locked up even after judges ordered their release.
In a court order, issued last month in Minnesota, Schiltz said the government had violated 96 orders in 76 cases. The U.S. Attorney there, Daniel Rosen, said in a filing, two days later that the cases had created an “enormous burden” for government attorneys.
Similarly, U.S. District Judge Nusrat Choudhury, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden in New York, wrote this month that ICE violated two “clear and unambiguous orders” by flying a man to New Mexico for detention while falsely claiming he was in New Jersey and could be brought to a court hearing.
A Justice Department spokesperson, Natalie Baldassarre, said the administration “is complying with court orders and fully enforcing federal immigration law.”
“If rogue judges followed the law in adjudicating cases and respected the government’s obligation to properly prepare cases, there wouldn’t be an ‘overwhelming’ habeas caseload or concern over DHS following orders,” she said.
LEGAL HURDLES
In New York, advocates have waited outside immigration court to connect detained immigrants with lawyers who can file same-day habeas claims – blocking their rapid transfer to a detention center in another state.
On January 16, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken issued an emergency ruling for an Ecuadorean man who was detained at his court hearing, barring the government from moving him out of New York. On January 30, U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter, who like Oetken was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, ordered his immediate release.
Still, many immigrants aren’t able to seek that relief. Some aren’t aware that they can file a habeas case. Others can’t find affordable lawyers.
Judy Rall, the U.S. citizen wife of a Venezuelan detainee who has spent almost a year at the Bluebonnet detention center in Texas, said she was quoted upwards of $5,000 to file a habeas petition, which she could not afford. She and her husband have a pending immigration case based on their marriage, but the government has declined to release him while the case is being adjudicated. He has no criminal record, but the government has alleged, without providing evidence, that he has links to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
This month, her lawyer offered to take on the habeas case for free.
“Our home burnt down, and I had told them I needed him to come help,” she said. “I assume that is the reason.”
Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Kristina Cooke in San Francisco and Brad Heath in Washington, D.C.; additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Minneapolis; Editing by Craig Timberg and Suzanne Goldenberg
The video played shows how ICE gang thugs narrated a scenario they hoped the courts would believe, but the videos show they rammed the woman, shot her in 2 seconds with no warnings or words, just rammed her car and then shot her five times. The video shows they lied about being boxed in as no one was in front of them. The wanted a legal kill because they were pissed at the people honking their horns at them, with the driver saying it is time to get aggressive. ICE are gang thugs with anger issues who think they have the right to do to people what ever they want. So another couple cases taken to court where they claimed domestic terrorists attacked ICE only to have them dismissed because of the ICE thugs and their bosses lies. But the victims are still stuck with hospital bills, lawyers bills, and car repairs that ICE thugs don’t have to pay for but the victims do. Hugs
This woman’s experiences at the hands of ICE is horrific and not one person will be prosecuted for the inhuman abusive treatment. Plus she will have hospital bills and car repairs due to the actions of ICE gang Gestapo thugs working for the government. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 