Federal judges in Philadelphia are vocally opposed to what they call the “illegal” policy by ICE of mandating detention for nearly all undocumented immigrants — and have been sharply critical of the arguments government attorneys are making to justify it.
U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III has overturned detention in six cases over the last two months, writing in one opinion that Immigration and Customs Enforcement “continues to act contrary to law, to spend taxpayer money needlessly, and to waste the scarce resources of the judiciary.”
And U.S. District Judge Kai N. Scott says she and her colleagues on the bench have been squaring off with the Justice Department in a manner similar to Heracles’ confrontation with Hydra, a monster that grew two heads every time one was chopped off.
Although the region’s federal judges have “unanimously rejected” the government’s attempts to rationalize ICE detention of immigrants “without cause, without notice, and in clear violation” of federal law, Scott wrote, the government continues to detain people day after day. And after each rejection, she wrote, “at least two more nearly identical” habeas petitions pop up on the court’s docket.
The courts are dealing with an explosion of habeas petitions in keeping with the massive numbers of detained immigrants, and the U.S. attorney’s offices, are trying and failing to keep up with the surge.
