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Since January 1, 2026, immigration attorneys in Minnesota have filed 691 requests to challenge unlawful detention using habeas corpus. In all of 2025, there were 128 total filings.
When Detention Becomes a Constitutional Injury
Even if the government had legitimate authority to detain someone initially, continuing that detention after a federal judge orders release transforms it into a constitutional violation—not a bureaucratic delay.
Judge Jerry Blackwell during a February hearing: “Detention without lawful authority is not a technical defect, it is a constitutional injury that unfairly falls on the heads of those who have done nothing wrong to justify it.”
The Scale of the Enforcement Operation
This explosion followed a massive immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities area involving large-scale deployment of federal agents. Federal agents fanned out across Minneapolis and St. Paul neighborhoods, conducting raids that swept up citizens and non-citizens alike. The operation targeted anyone ICE suspected might be in the country unlawfully—a strategy that caught people who were in the country lawfully.
Local immigration attorneys scrambled to respond. Law firms that typically handled a handful of detention cases per month suddenly faced dozens. Aid organizations set up emergency hotlines. Community groups organized know-your-rights sessions in church basements and community centers.
Many detainees had strong claims: pending requests to stay in the country for safety reasons, valid work permits, family members who were U.S. citizens. Under normal circumstances, these individuals might never have been detained at all. But the enforcement operation operated with a different calculus—arrest first, sort out the details later.
The timing created additional problems. Many detainees had upcoming court dates for their immigration cases. Being transferred to facilities hundreds or thousands of miles away made it nearly impossible for them to attend hearings or meet with their attorneys. Some missed critical deadlines because they couldn’t access their documents or communicate with their lawyers.
Immigration courts, already facing a backlog of over 3 million cases nationwide, struggled to keep track of detainees who had been moved multiple times. Attorneys reported spending hours on the phone trying to locate clients who had been transferred without notice. In some cases, families didn’t know where their loved ones were being held for days or even weeks.
How Judges Started Writing Operational Manuals
Federal judges have responded to systematic non-compliance by getting extremely specific. Not “release this person,” but exactly how the release must happen, down to what the person should be wearing when they walk out.
Because ICE had been releasing people in ways that made the release pointless in practice. Detainees transported to Texas facilities were being dropped off far from home with no phones, no documents, sometimes in weather they weren’t dressed for.
Judges adapted by eliminating loopholes that let the government technically follow directives while ignoring their intent.
A U.S. Citizen in His Underwear
ChongLy “Scott” Thao, a U.S. citizen for decades, was taking a nap one afternoon when federal agents forced open his door. They pointed guns at his family, yelling at them to get on the ground. His young grandson was present and cried during the incident.
When Thao tried to show his identification, the agents initially told him they didn’t want to see it. They led him out in handcuffs wearing minimal clothing—described in various accounts as shorts or underwear—and Crocs, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. In frigid weather, they drove him away from his home, forced him out of the car to photograph him, then after an hour or two drove him back home. Only then did they review his identification.
They left without apologizing.
The Government’s Counter-Narrative
The Trump administration has reframed this entire conflict as overreach by the courts. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said: “If rogue judges followed the law in deciding cases and respected the Government’s obligation to properly prepare cases, there wouldn’t be an ‘overwhelming’ caseload or concern over following directives.”
Notice the rhetorical move. The problem isn’t that ICE violated directives. It’s that judges issued the directives in the first place. If judges would stop ordering releases, there wouldn’t be a compliance problem.
After the threats and public criticism, DHS announced a partial drawdown of the enforcement operation, withdrawing roughly 700 agents from Minneapolis. White House Border Czar Tom Homan characterized this as reflecting cooperation from state and local officials in Minnesota. The timing suggests otherwise.
What Habeas Corpus Protection Means
The Constitution protects the right to challenge detention before a judge so strongly that it can only be suspended “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
But this protection isn’t being formally suspended now. It’s being made useless by delaying and ignoring it. When a judge directs release but the government ignores that directive for days or weeks, the formal right becomes meaningless. You’ve nominally won. You’re still in custody.
Judge Blackwell understood this during his February hearing. He questioned the government’s chief civil attorney, Ana Voss, about who was responsible for carrying out release directives. When Voss suggested that once DOJ lawyers passed the directive to ICE, the responsibility shifted, Blackwell pushed back hard. “The answer cannot be that ‘We called ICE’ and then a shoulder shrug,” he said.
He then asked whether he should haul agency counsel into his courtroom to answer these questions directly. “Because I do want to know why the directives aren’t complied with and why.”
Similar Patterns Across Multiple States
Minnesota became the focal point because of the enforcement operation’s scale there. But judges in Colorado, Texas, and elsewhere have issued remarkably similar directives addressing the same problems: delayed releases, releases without documents, releases without appropriate clothing, unilateral monitoring conditions.
Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio, ordering the release of a five-year-old child and his father detained while seeking asylum, invoked the Declaration of Independence. He noted that Thomas Jefferson had listed grievances against an authoritarian king, including sending “swarms of officers to harass our people.” Biery wrote that “we the people are hearing echoes of that history.”
In New York, Judge Analisa Torres directed ICE to release a Guatemalan man who had been living in the United States for over a decade with no criminal record. ICE ignored the directive for five days. When the man was finally released, he was dropped off at a bus station in rural Pennsylvania with no money, no phone, and no way to contact his family in New York.
In California, Judge Maxine Chesney documented a case where ICE released a detainee at 2 a.m. in an unfamiliar city, miles from any public transportation. The man wandered the streets until morning, when he could find someone to help him call his attorney.
These aren’t isolated incidents or bureaucratic mistakes. They represent a deliberate strategy: comply with the letter of release directives while making the release as difficult and punitive as possible.
What Happens Next
The outcome of this conflict will shape both enforcement and the rule of law more broadly. Federal judges have powerful tools—documentation, contempt proceedings, increasingly specific directives to fix the problem. But they ultimately depend on either voluntary compliance or political pressure that makes non-compliance too costly.
The Trump administration has shown willingness to challenge authority openly. The scale of the enforcement operation reflects a calculation that public support for aggressive deportations exceeds concern about going around the courts.
Judges are building records. These records serve multiple purposes: evidence for appeals to higher courts, permanent documentation of government behavior, and public education about what’s happening in the federal system.
The real question is: does a judicial directive matter if the executive branch can ignore it and wait? Most people in custody don’t have lawyers. Most federal judges don’t have the bandwidth to personally track every violation.
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