ICE quickly arrests released immigrants after winning legal challenges | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

Immigrants who have been released from detention after winning habeas corpus petitions in court are being rearrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Guardian has identified at least 20 cases nationwide involving people who were arrested after being released on habeas corpus petitions over the last year, according to court records, lawyers and media reports.

The increase in arrests and detentions has led immigrants to file more than 91,000 habeas petitions as they seek to challenge their detention, according to a ProPublica study. More petitions have been filed since Jan. 25 than during the last three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term, combined, according to the outlet.

A petition for habeas corpus — Latin for “you shall have a body” — challenges in federal court the government’s right to keep someone in custody while its main legal case is pending.

But a new development is that people are released and quickly find themselves detained again.

“We have seen a very large increase in the number of people released on habeas petitions, only to very quickly be re-detained, often in violation of the federal court order,” said Bridget Pranzatelli, attorney for the National Immigration Project.

One of his clients, Akram Mahmoud Omar, a 77-year-old Palestinian who suffered a heart attack while detained at “Camp 57,” the ICE detention center inside the notorious Louisiana State Prison in Angola, was rearrested by ICE within 10 days of being released on a habeas petition, as first reported by the Intercept.

And in Minnesota, seven immigrants were re-detained before even leaving the detention center at the Whipple Federal Building in suburban Minneapolis, as first reported by MPR.

“I don’t think being taken out of a building and straight into the arms of four or more police officers is consistent with the court order,” Daniel Suitor, the attorney for two of the men, said in a telephone interview.

The courts are taking note. In an October ruling, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado denied the government’s attempt to deny a habeas petition on the grounds that it had the authority to re-detain the petitioner. According to the court, the government had already “demonstrated a pattern of re-detaining” non-citizens who had benefited from a habeas measure.

In Louisiana, in the case of another Pranzatelli client, a federal judge arrested a top federal immigration official for contempt of court for violating orders, demanding the release of Ibrahim Mohammed after he was re-arrested three times by ICE, as first reported by the Banner. Two other federal judges, in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, have also held or threatened to hold federal immigration authorities in contempt.

Lawyers believe some re-detentions are linked to the Trump administration’s push to deport people to third countries.

“This really has to do with the explosion of deals with third countries, primarily African countries, over the last four months,” said Susanna Booth, senior attorney at the Washington, DC-based Amica Center for Immigrant Rights.

The Trump administration is increasingly sending immigrants who cannot be deported back to their home countries, either because the country does not accept them or because they have protections from deportation, to another country entirely, where they have no citizenship and often have no ties. In the past, these immigrants were largely safe from deportation.

“They simply cannot be deported to the countries listed on the deportation suspension order, but they can be deported to third countries,” Nora Ahmed, » declared the director of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “And that’s always been the law. It’s just not been practiced.”

More than 25,000 noncitizens have been deported from the United States to countries not their own, even though they face torture or persecution. Often, they are incarcerated in prisons or held in secure hotels and pressured to return to their home countries, which human rights experts say is a violation of the Convention Against Torture.

“Say you win (your petition), but then (the government) says ‘Well, that’s good because then we can just send them to Liberia,’ it’s like you’re playing Whac-a-Mole with every country in the world,” Booth said.

In today’s political climate, lawyers are eager for judges to grant habeas petitions that prevent the government from easily re-detaining and deporting a client.

“The court will say, for example, ‘The government must give us at least three days’ notice if it attempts (again) to deport this person,'” said Tess Hellgren, an attorney with the National Immigration Project. “It may not seem like a lot, but it’s actually a pretty significant number of cases,” she said, where the government could try to put someone on a flight from the United States immediately.

Booth also has two clients who were re-arrested, threatened with deportation to two African countries, with which they had no connection, only to be released after a second habeas petition. She says her firm preemptively prepares second habeas petitions to file immediately before clients are transferred to a different state than where they were detained, to prevent clients from being trapped in courts with less permissive judges.

In September, an appeals court ruled that the Trump administration must provide sufficient notice of deportations to third countries and allow immigrants to challenge their deportation. Shortly afterward, the Supreme Court’s six-justice conservative majority granted an emergency stay of the ruling, allowing the Trump administration to continue rapidly deporting immigrants to third countries without providing an explanation.

Additionally, some immigrants facing deportations to third countries who have been denied deportation are now eligible for asylum after a court struck down a Biden-era policy barring most people who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally from obtaining asylum.

Joseph Giardina, an immigration attorney in Louisiana, had two Egyptian clients who were protected by a deportation denial. They were detained again weeks after being released on habeas and threatened with deportation, but were later granted asylum.

The Trump administration knows that “(the Biden-era rule) was the only reason they weren’t granted asylum,” Giardina said, “and they’re doing their best to deport them as quickly as possible to another country.”

Yet many people are re-arrested with no apparent plan to deport, leaving them stuck in indefinite detention. Courts are also taking months to decide thousands of habeas cases, particularly in Louisiana and Texas, where there are many detention centers, according to an analysis by Bolts and the New Orleans-based Lens newspaper and the Texas Tribune. And the fear of further detention risks further traumatizing their clients and their families, lawyers say.

“We can kind 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, which is arrest people and detain them for long periods of time,” said Jonah Eaton, a litigation attorney with UnLocal who has filed habeas lawsuits for immigrant detainees.