ICE re-detains migrants after court-ordered releases — The Guardian
In the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is re-detaining immigrants who were released from custody after courts granted habeas corpus petitions. The Guardian identified at least 20 such cases across the country over the past year, citing court documents, lawyers and media reports.
Repeated detentions
A habeas corpus petition allows a person to challenge in federal court the government's authority to hold them in custody while their main legal case is being considered. According to ProPublica research, immigrants have filed more than 91,000 such petitions due to the increase in arrests and detentions. Since January 25, more have been filed than during the previous three presidential administrations combined, including Donald Trump's first term.
Bridget Pranzatelli, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, said there has been a sharp increase in cases in which people released following a habeas corpus petition are quickly detained again, often in defiance of court orders. Her 77-year-old client, Palestinian Akram Mahmoud Omar, was re-detained by ICE within 10 days of his release. During his previous detention at the Camp 57 center at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, he suffered a heart attack.
In Minnesota, seven immigrants were re-detained before they had even left the detention facility at the Whipple Federal Building near Minneapolis. Daniel Sutor, the lawyer for two of them, said that handing people directly over to several officers did not comply with the court order for their release.
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In October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Colorado rejected the government's attempt to close one habeas corpus petition, citing the existing practice of re-detaining noncitizens who had been granted court protection. In Louisiana, a federal judge held a senior federal immigration official in contempt of court in the case of Ibrahim Mohammed, whom ICE re-detained three times.
Deportations to third countries
Lawyers link some of the repeat detentions to the Trump administration's attempts to deport people to third countries of which they are not citizens and with which they often have no ties. This includes people who cannot be deported to their countries of origin because a state refuses to accept them or because they have been granted protection from deportation there.
According to the report, more than 25,000 noncitizens of the United States were deported to countries that were not their countries of origin, despite a possible risk of torture or persecution. Human rights experts believe that holding such people in prisons or guarded hotels and pressuring them to return to their countries of origin violates the Convention Against Torture.
In September, an appeals court ruled that the Trump administration must provide advance notice of deportations to third countries and give immigrants an opportunity to challenge their removal. Soon afterward, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily suspended the ruling on an emergency basis, allowing the administration to continue rapid deportations to third countries.
