{"id":12085,"date":"2026-04-20T03:49:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T03:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/04\/20\/ordered-free-still-locked-up-judges-fume-as-trump-administration-holds-ice-detainees-los-angeles-times\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T03:49:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T03:49:37","slug":"ordered-free-still-locked-up-judges-fume-as-trump-administration-holds-ice-detainees-los-angeles-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/04\/20\/ordered-free-still-locked-up-judges-fume-as-trump-administration-holds-ice-detainees-los-angeles-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Ordered free, still locked up: Judges fume as Trump administration holds ICE detainees – Los Angeles Times"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Judge Troy Nunley was fed up. <\/p>\n

Federal immigration officials had once again flouted his authority by leaving him to guess if they were keeping a man locked up in a California City detention center after Nunley ordered him released. When he was finally set free, the man was booted onto the street with no passport, driver\u2019s license or other personal effects. The judge\u2019s demand that the items be returned were met with silence. <\/p>\n

And so on Tuesday, Nunley, the chief judge of the Eastern District of California, slapped Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Yu with an official sanction and a $250 fine. <\/p>\n

In a scathing order, Nunley laid out why he was compelled to take such a rare step. The fine may have been less than some traffic tickets, but it\u2019s nearly unheard for a judge to formally admonish a government lawyer. <\/p>\n

By Yu\u2019s own admission, he was drowning in work. In his order, Nunley recounted the attorney\u2019s claim he\u2019d been assigned more than 300 nearly identical cases in the last three months, all of immigrants in detention who argued they were being held without cause. The Department of Justice later clarified that the man had been let go right away and that Yu merely failed to promptly tell the court. <\/p>\n

Court filings show many of the California cases involve longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly hauled off to jail after routine check-ins with immigration officials. One was an Afghan who\u2019d helped the American war effort. Another a Cambodian grandmother of eight who fled Pol Pot\u2019s killing fields as a girl nearly 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

Until last year, most would have fought deportation on bond after a brief hearing with an immigration judge. Now, their only hope of release is to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus \u2014 a legal maneuver once typically reserved for death row inmates and suspected terrorists \u2014 inundating the country\u2019s busiest federal courts with thousands of emergency suits. <\/p>\n

The Trump administration attorney said he was trying to \u201ctriage\u201d the situation, but Nunley found he repeatedly failed to comply, leaving people with the right to walk free stuck behind bars. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court is not persuaded,\u201d he wrote, issuing the sanctions. <\/p>\n

In a petition filed Wednesday, U.S. Atty. Eric Grant asked Nunley to impose the sanction on his office instead, or on him personally, rather than on his deputy. <\/p>\n

The sanction came days after Nunley took the unusual step of announcing a \u201cjudicial emergency\u201d in the district, which covers nearly half of California, stretching from the Oregon border to the Mojave Desert in the inland part of the state, including Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.<\/p>\n

In the last year, the Eastern District has received more petitions from immigration detainees than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States: more than 2,700 since January, compared to fewer than 500 last year and just 18 in 2024. Similar crises are playing out elsewhere, with federal courts in Minnesota briefly paralyzed amid the Trump administration\u2019s enforcement blitz there last winter.<\/p>\n

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\"People <\/picture>\n
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People detained are seen behind fences at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.<\/p>\n

(Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

In an interview with The Times, Nunley said dealing with the surge of activity since last summer had been \u201clike being hit over the head with a bat.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re up all night doing these cases,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

So far this year, the Eastern District\u2019s six active judges have ordered almost 2,000 people freed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of the cases that we see are cases where people should not be detained,\u201d Nunley said. \u201cThey should be receiving hearings to determine whether or not they are to remain in this country, and until they receive those hearings, they should be free.\u201d <\/p>\n

Since last July, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered that all immigrants it arrests are subject to \u201cmandatory detention\u201d \u2014 a policy that had previously only applied to those caught at the border. <\/p>\n

The change came four days after President Trump signed a spending bill that earmarked $45 billion to expand the federal network of immigrant lockups.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been a sea change in the way the government has read the law,\u201d said My Khanh Ngo, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Immigrants\u2019 Rights Project. \u201cAlmost every judge who has looked at this has agreed these people should get bond, and yet thousands of people are still sitting in detention.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\"High <\/picture>\n
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Elizabeth Vega, 15, right, and Darlene Rumualdo, 15, from Torres High School join labor organizers, clergy leaders and immigrant rights groups to protest immigration raids nationwide at La Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles on Jan. 23.<\/p>\n

(Genaro Molina \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Longtime U.S. residents who might once have fought removal from home \u2014 where they can more easily gather evidence to support their case and confer with lawyers \u2014 are instead being held indefinitely. <\/p>\n

Many have no criminal record. Some have been in the U.S. so long that the countries they came from no longer exist. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are locked up in the same facilities as people accused of crimes, people who\u2019ve been convicted of crimes … and then you\u2019re telling people, you have no shot of getting out,\u201d Ngo said. \u201cDetaining people and not giving them the chance to get out of detention is a way of coercing people to give up their claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

The habeas process can take weeks or months depending on the judge and the district. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the immigration cases dropped on our district, we got hit harder than any other outside West Texas,\u201d Nunley said. \u201cInitially we had more cases than anyone else.\u201d <\/p>\n

Today, data compiled by ProPublica and legal activist groups including the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative<\/a> show almost a quarter of the roughly 30,000 active habeas petitions in the United States are in California courts. Nunley\u2019s own tabulations show half the California cases are in his district, where a perfect storm of stepped-up enforcement, a large population of immigrant workers and a concentration of detention centers produced a flash flood of habeas petitions. <\/p>\n

The cases rely on the Constitution\u2019s guarantee of due process before being deprived of life, liberty or property. But according to court filings, in some instances the government has argued \u201cthe Fifth Amendment does not apply\u201d to detained immigrants.<\/p>\n

Justice Department lawyers responding to the bids for freedom now regularly complain they\u2019re being crushed under paperwork.<\/p>\n

Judges accustomed to having government lawyers comply with their orders have been left fuming. <\/p>\n

In California\u2019s Central District, which includes L.A. and surrounding areas, Judge Sunshine Sykes wrote a fiery decision earlier this year that said the Trump administration is inflicting \u201cterror against noncitizens.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sykes is one of several federal judges across the country that have tried to compel the government to resume bond hearings. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that decision in March, leaving the habeas system in place for now. But with challenges or recent decisions across multiple circuits, experts say the fight is fated for the Supreme Court. <\/p>\n

\u201cICE has the law and the facts on its side, and it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land,\u201d a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email to The Times.<\/p>\n

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\"A <\/picture>\n
\n

A woman holds an \u201cICE not welcome here!\u201d sign at a vigil in San Pedro in January.<\/p>\n

(Gina Ferazzi \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

The lawyers fighting to free those jailed under the Trump administration\u2019s mandatory detention policy say they were not initially equipped for these legal battles because they used to be exceedingly rare. <\/p>\n

Most federal judges had only seen a handful of habeas petitions before last summer \u2014 then suddenly they had hundreds of requests for urgent relief, according to Jean Reisz, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic. <\/p>\n

Reisz said there are efforts to get pro bono law groups trained on how to effectively argue habeas cases, \u201cbut it takes a while to get up to speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"A <\/picture>\n
\n

A federal agent asks residents to move back after a shooting during an immigration enforcement operation in Willowbrook on Jan. 21.<\/p>\n

(Genaro Molina \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

At the same time, Reisz said, lawyers are pushing judges who oversee the cases to act swiftly, since interminable procedural delays ensure people remain incarcerated.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the habeas petitions include a motion for temporary restraining orders, and that requires emergency decisions from the courts, which requires the courts to act very fast,\u201d Reisz said. <\/p>\n

In California\u2019s federal district courts, the backlog remains thousands deep. Nunley said the system is struggling to keep up with the crush of cases. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing that says that noncitizens should not be entitled to due process,\u201d Nunley said. \u201cThese are our people, they reside in our district. They\u2019re entitled to the same due process that you and I are entitled to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

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More to Read <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judge Troy Nunley was fed up. Federal immigration officials had once again flouted his authority by leaving him to guess if they were keeping a man locked up in a California City detention center after Nunley ordered him released. When he was finally set free, the man was booted onto the street with no passport, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}