Judges in three states have threatened or imposed contempt on immigration authorities
One of Bridget Pranzatelli’s clients, Akram Mahmoud Omar, is a 77-year-old Palestinian man who suffered a heart attack while detained in “Camp 57,” the ICE detention facility inside Louisiana’s state prison in Angola. ICE arrested Omar again within 10 days of his release following a habeas petition, The Intercept first reported. The Guardian’s report also included a photograph captioned as a security walk outside Camp 57, a facility to house immigration detainees at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La., on Sept. 3, 2025. The photograph was credited to Gerald Herbert/AP.
In Minnesota, seven immigrants were re-detained before they exited the Whipple federal building detention facility on the outskirts of Minneapolis, MPR first reported. “I don’t think being taken out of a building and directly into the arms of four or more officers complies with the court’s order,” Daniel Suitor, an attorney to two of the men, said in a phone interview. The Guardian’s report included a photograph captioned, “Federal agents stand guard as protestors gather outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on January 8, 2026,” credited to Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty Images.
Pranzatelli, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, said the pattern of re-detention has sharpened. “We’ve seen a very, very sharp increase in people who are released on habeas petitions, only to be very rapidly re-detained, often in violation of the federal court’s order,” she said. The Guardian’s review of court records, attorneys and media reports identified at least 20 cases nationwide in which people were detained again in the last year after winning release orders. The Guardian described many people as challenging their detention through habeas corpus filings only to be arrested again, in violation of court orders.
A petition of habeas corpus — Latin for “you shall have a body” — asks a federal court to review the government’s right to hold a person in custody while that person’s main legal case proceeds. Filings have surged with enforcement: more than 91,000 petitions have been filed by immigrants seeking to challenge their detentions, according to research by ProPublica. More petitions have been filed since 25 January than during the past three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term, combined.
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 on the ground that the government claimed it had the power to re-detain the petitioner. The court said the government had a “demonstrated pattern of re-detaining” non-citizens who had been granted habeas relief.
In Louisiana, a federal judge held a senior federal immigration official in contempt of court for violating orders, demanding the release of Ibrahim Mohammed after ICE re-arrested him three times, The Banner first reported. Mohammed was another client of Pranzatelli. Two other federal judges, in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, have also held federal immigration authorities in contempt or threatened to do so.
Attorneys believe certain re-detentions are connected to the Trump administration’s push to deport people to third countries. “It’s really tethered to the explosion of third country agreements with primarily African nations in the past four months,” Susanna Booth, a senior attorney at the Washington, DC-based Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said.
The Trump administration is increasingly sending immigrants who cannot be removed to their home countries — because the country will not accept them, or because 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. Ahmed said, “They just can’t be removed to the countries that are listed on the ‘withholding of removal’ order, but they can be removed to third countries,” and said, “And that has always been the law. It’s just that it wasn’t practiced.” Booth described the stakes this way: “Say you win [your petition], but then [the government] is like ‘Well, that’s fine because then we can just send them to Liberia,’ it just kind of feels like you’re playing Whac-a-Mole with every country in the world.”
The Guardian reports more than 25,000 non-citizens have been deported from the United States to countries that are not their own, despite potentially facing torture or persecution. Many are 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.
A photograph published with the reporting was captioned, “Airport staff and officials attend to a plane carrying migrants deported from the US at the Roberts international airport in Harbel, about 56km outside of Liberia’s capital of Monrovia, on 20 August 2026,” and credited to Matthew Jacobs/AFP/Getty Images.
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 afterward, the Supreme Court’s six-justice conservative majority granted an emergency stay of that ruling, allowing the administration to continue quickly deporting immigrants to third countries without issuing an explanation.
Some immigrants facing third-country removals who won withholding of removal are now eligible for asylum after a court overruled a Biden-era policy prohibiting most people who crossed the US-Mexico border unlawfully from obtaining asylum. Joseph Giardina, a Louisiana immigration attorney, had two Egyptian clients protected under withholding of removal. They were re-detained weeks after being released on habeas and threatened with deportation, but were then granted asylum. Giardina said the Trump administration knows that “[the Biden-era rule] was the only reason they were not granted asylum” and that “they are doing their damnedest to deport them as quickly as they possibly can to another country.”
Attorneys are seeking habeas orders intended to prevent the government from easily re-detaining and deporting a client. Tess Hellgren, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, said, “The court will say, for example, ‘The government needs to give us at least three days’ notice if they’re trying to remove this person [again],’” and added, “It might not sound like much, but that’s actually quite a bit in cases.” The requirement can matter where the government may be attempting to put someone on a flight out of the US immediately.
Booth also has two clients who were rearrested, threatened with deportation to two countries in Africa where they had no ties, and released only after a second habeas filing. Her practice preemptively prepares second habeas petitions to file immediately before clients are moved to a different state from where they were detained, preventing them from being trapped in courts with less-permissive judges.
Yet many people are being re-arrested with no apparent plans for deportation, leaving them stranded in detention indefinitely. Courts are taking months to adjudicate the thousands of habeas cases, particularly in Louisiana and Texas, where many detention centers are located, according to an analysis by Bolts, the New Orleans-based outlet the Lens, and the Texas Tribune. Attorneys say the fear of re-detention risks further trauma for their clients and families. “We can sort 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 to do, which is arrest people and hold them for long periods of time,” said Jonah Eaton, an UnLocal litigation attorney who has filed habeas suits for immigration detainees.