Hundreds of judges across the nation have ruled over 4,400 times that President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement arm is detaining people unlawfully, according to a new Reuters review of court documents. And that’s just since October.
The Trump administration’s immense increase in detainments rests, in part, on their decision to detain people while their immigration cases are moving through the system—a departure from previous administrations’ interpretation of immigration law. This has led to a steep increase in immigrants petitioning the courts to be released, as Reuters reports, and the thousands of rulings finding that these prolonged detainments were unlawful.
Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, told Reuters that the increase in lawsuits came as “no surprise” because “many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations.” But not all of the judges challenging the Trump administration’s mass deportation mechanism were appointed by Democrats.
Just last week, a judge appointed by George W. Bush ordered the release of a Venezuelan detainee. “It is appalling that the Government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written,” wrote US District Judge Thomas Johnston of West Virginia.
Before Trump 2.0, if immigration enforcement agents detained someone without documentation who had no criminal record, they would typically be released on bond while their case went through the system. Trump officials are now often keeping those individuals locked up indefinitely.
Earlier this month, the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Trump administration a win. In a 2-1 ruling, that court held that the administration could hold people whose cases are actively going through the system. It’s a key win, as the circuit oversees Texas and Louisiana, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement has some of its most populated detention centers.
The number of people kept in detainment who have no criminal record—the population petitioning the courts to be released—has increased exponentially under Trump’s second administration. According to a recent report from the American Immigration Council, the Trump administration’s arrest practices have led to a 2,450 percent increase in people with no criminal record being held in ICE detention on any given day.
This mass detention, per the new Reuters review, has spurred detainees to file “more than 20,200 federal lawsuits demanding their release since Trump took office”—an overflow that has created a “legal logjam” and has resulted in people remaining locked up even after judges have ordered their release.
The environment of fear for scores of these detained immigrants doesn’t end after a judge orders their release. That’s true for Joseph Thomas, an 18-year-old who was detained with his father in Wisconsin in December and whose case was highlighted in the Reuters investigation. The pair are both asylum seekers and were driving on the father’s Walmart delivery route. Within a month, another Bush-appointee, Chief US District Judge Patrick Schiltz, ordered that they both be released.
Even though Thomas is out of detention and can return to school, things aren’t back to normal. He’s afraid to go in person to class and is instead learning online.
