{"id":158217,"date":"2026-02-10T10:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T10:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/158217\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T10:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T10:19:10","slug":"amid-trump-immigration-crackdown-texas-habeas-cases-surge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/158217\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid Trump immigration crackdown, Texas habeas cases surge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s push for mass deportations has resulted in more than 18,000 challenges in federal court from immigrants claiming their detention is illegal, more than were filed under the last three administrations combined \u2014 including President Donald Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n

So far this year, immigrants are filing on average more than 200 of these cases, known as habeas petitions, daily across the country, with California and Texas accounting for about 40% of new cases, a ProPublica analysis of federal court filings found. To keep tabs on this historic rise, ProPublica is publishing a habeas case tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t recall a time that anything like this has ever happened,\u201d said Daniel Caudillo, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at Texas Tech University School of Law and a recently departed immigration judge.<\/p>\n

The wave of habeas petitions comes in response to new administration policies aimed at ramping up the number of deportations. Among those are policies that require the majority of immigrants who entered the country illegally to remain in detention while their immigration cases are proceeding.<\/p>\n

Lawyers say these policies upend decades of legal precedent that previously allowed immigrants who had been in the country for years and posed no security or flight risk a chance to remain in their communities until an immigration judge could determine whether they could stay in the country legally.<\/p>\n

On Friday night, a divided three-judge panel in the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sided with the administration<\/a> in limiting bond hearings to immigrants who entered the country lawfully. Caudillo called the decision \u201cdevastating,\u201d adding that as a result, most immigrants held in states that fall under the circuit, which includes Texas, will now be subject to mandatory detention. Appeals of judges\u2019 rulings in habeas cases challenging immigrants\u2019 detention have been filed in nine of the 12 regional appeals courts, meaning the question could ultimately find its way to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Officials from the White House and Department of Homeland Security didn\u2019t respond to a list of questions, but in statements, spokespeople insisted that the Trump administration is fully enforcing federal immigration law and placed the blame on the federal judges.<\/p>\n

A large majority of federal judges who\u2019ve ruled on the habeas petitions so far are siding with immigrants. A recent analysis by Politico found that over 300 judges have ruled against<\/a> the administration\u2019s new detention policies, while only 14 have upheld them. The result is that federal judges frequently are ordering the government to either release immigrants from detention or offer them a bond hearing before an immigration judge to determine whether they are eligible for release while their immigration case proceeds.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump and Secretary Noem are now enforcing the law and arresting illegal aliens who have no right to be in our country, and reversed Biden\u2019s catch and release policy. We are applying the law as written,\u201d wrote Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson.<\/p>\n

The caseload has overwhelmed legal advocates and government attorneys.<\/p>\n

In court filings, U.S. attorneys are telling judges the sheer volume of petitions is burdening their offices, pushing them to shift resources away from other priorities. In a case originating from Minnesota, where the administration has been waging a monthslong immigration crackdown, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen wrote in a declaration that his attorneys and paralegals were \u201ccontinuously working over time\u201d while the office\u2019s civil division was at 50% capacity.<\/p>\n

The number of habeas filings in that state jumped from a dozen in 2024 to over 700 in the past two months alone, placing Minnesota third behind Texas and California, ProPublica found. The load has been such that, in a rare moment of candor, a government attorney detailed to the office complained to a federal judge that \u201cthe system sucks, this job sucks.\u201d The lawyer, Julie Le, reportedly was let go<\/a> from the U.S. attorney\u2019s office after the public rant. (ProPublica was not able to reach Le for comment. The Department of Justice confirmed her detail with the office was over.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIf rogue judges followed the law in adjudicating cases and respected the Government\u2019s obligation to properly prepare cases, there wouldn\u2019t be an \u2018overwhelming\u2019 habeas caseload or concern over DHS following orders,\u201d a DOJ spokesperson wrote in response to questions from ProPublica.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen there are a lot of rogue judges,\u201d said David Briones, a senior judge in the Western District of Texas, in response to the Justice Department\u2019s statement. \u201cObviously we feel that we\u2019re correct, that\u2019s all I can say.\u201d The Western District of Texas leads the country in habeas cases, with over 1,300 filed in the last three months, and Briones has generally ruled against the government in these cases, according to El Paso Matters<\/a>. The Texas Tribune<\/a> has also reported on the rise of habeas cases in Texas.<\/p>\n

Judges are growing increasingly frustrated, publicly rebuking the administration for missing deadlines and failing to comply with court orders.<\/p>\n

Recently, a Texas federal judge ordered the release of the 5-year-old Minnesota boy who made headlines after he was pictured wearing a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack as immigration agents escorted him and his father to their vehicle. In a fiery ruling<\/a>, judge Fred Biery of the Western District of Texas chastised the administration for Liam Conejo Ramos\u2019 detention. \u201cThe case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

The number of immigrants held in detention has increased from around 40,000 when Trump took office to more than 70,000 this year. While the number of recent border crossers in detention has fallen, the number of detained immigrants arrested by federal immigration agents elsewhere in the country tripled during the first nine months of the Trump administration, a recent analysis<\/a> by the Deportation Data Project found.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just been a very, very chaotic landscape,\u201d said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, a national advocacy organization that, among other things, represents detained immigrants and provides assistance to attorneys and community-based groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think that chaos is bleeding into communities everywhere, both because of the extremely traumatizing ways that people are being arrested and detained,\u201d she said, and because of the amount of money and resources being spent on detaining people who in the past would have gotten out on bond or not been detained in the first place as their cases made their way through the process.<\/p>\n

Denise Gilman, co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, who has argued habeas cases on behalf of immigrants over the years, sees a positive side to the sudden rise in cases, she told ProPublica.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are starting to pay attention to how massive and arbitrary and illogical the immigration detention system is.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this story, ProPublica analyzed federal habeas petitions filed by immigrant detainees in district courts across the country using records from Public Access to Court Electronic Records and the Free Law Project. The data includes some cases that were refiled for a variety of reasons, such as filing errors or deficiencies.<\/p>\n

ProPublica plans to continue reporting on conditions inside immigration detention facilities. Please get in touch with our reporters through Signal at 917-512-0201 if you or someone you know:<\/p>\n

Has worked at a detention facility housing immigrants.<\/p>\n

Has been detained at such a facility.<\/p>\n

Knows information about companies that have been contracted to build and provide services at such facilities.<\/p>\n

Can share other insight or information about immigration detention facilities.<\/p>\n

We are also interested in any letters, images, videos or other documentation that you can share. Check out these tips<\/a> for contacting us securely. We take your privacy seriously.<\/p>\n

Misty Harris<\/a> contributed research.<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Politico has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[145,18819,21382,27,29,28,6748],"class_list":["post-158217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-donald-trump","tag-fifth-circuit-court-of-appeals","tag-illegal-immigration-in-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-well-b-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}