More than 24,000 immigration detention habeas corpus petitions have been filed in federal courts as attorneys warn that new detention policies could weaken due-process protections.
Federal courts have received more than 24,000 habeas corpus petitions from people detained by immigration authorities since January of last year. That number surpasses the combined total of the three previous administrations, and in the last month alone, the number has increased by more than 35%, according to a ProPublica database.
The reason, lawyers and experts explain, is that the government changed the rules regarding detentions. US law distinguishes between immigrants detained at the border and those who have lived in the country for years.
For, the latter have had the option of decades requesting bond from an immigration judge. But a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy change last summer stipulated that all immigrants must be treated as if they were seeking entry, even if they are already physically inside the country. Last September, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) reinterpreted the law to mean that everyone must be detained while their deportation cases are being resolved.
“We haven’t seen anything like this in the past,” says Sam Lester, an immigrant rights attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida. The number of cases is “a direct result of this administration’s deportation efforts,” which “have led to the detention of thousands without due process.”
“The government is pushing for the mass detention of people with no criminal record who have lived in the country for years. To do so, it has reinterpreted decades of immigration jurisprudence, arguing that the law requires the detention of all undocumented people who entered without inspection—around two million people, including some who arrived as children,” he adds.
