The Habeas Rabbit
What we're building for the fight against unlawful ICE detention.
Something broke in America’s immigration courts last year, and it’s only now getting the public attention it deserves.
In summer 2025, ICE quietly changed a fundamental element in how the immigration detention system works. As a result, tens of thousands of immigrants — many who have lived here for decades — effectively lost the right to ask a judge for release from ICE custody while their court case proceeds (often over the course of months, or even years).
Now, over 70,000 people sit in detention facilities with no clear path to freedom. For many of these individuals, the only way to challenge unlawful detention is a habeas corpus petition filed in federal court.
While I’ve been away from this newsletter the past two weeks, this is where I’ve focused my energy: building tools to help attorneys navigate the procedural maze of these emergency petitions, and get more people out of detention faster.
Let me explain what’s happening, why it matters, and how we’re trying to help ⤵️
But first, an important disclaimer for new readers:
I am not an attorney, and this is not legal advice. I am, however, well-versed in our immigration system — including the agencies and legal processes involved — as a product of nearly a decade working with law firms, tech startups, and nonprofit organizations in this space.
This experience is largely what led to this newsletter: translating the legal and technical components of this massive complex system for different audiences is already part of my day-to-day work. And expanding the public’s understanding of (and engagement with) this system is key to fixing this mess.
The Courts Can’t Keep Up
In 2024, federal courts across the country handled 222 total habeas corpus petitions related to immigration detention. In 2025, that number jumped to over 8,000.
What we’ve seen so far in 2026 shows just how urgent the unlawful detention crisis has become. Federal courts in Minnesota saw more habeas petitions filed in the first three weeks of January 2026 than in all of 2025. The El Paso federal court, which saw about 26 of these cases per year from 2021 to 2024, is on pace to receive 2,800 this year.
These aren’t abstract numbers. Each petition represents a person sitting in a jail cell in a soft-sided tent, or on a military base, or in a state or county jail, or a private prison — or even a “family detention center” like the one in Dilley, Texas where 5-year old Liam and his father were held after they were taken by ICE in Minnesota.
On Sunday, a federal judge ordered them to be released immediately — the result of a successful habeas petition.
Liam’s Story
By now, you’ve likely seen photos of the masked federal agents arresting Liam and his father in Minnesota last month. The photos of the boy, wearing his adorable blue bunny hat and clutching his father’s hand while they’re taken into custody, quickly spread online. The incident was a jarring reminder of the immense cruelty in this campaign of terror.
Fortunately, an immigration attorney filed an emergency petition in federal court to challenge the detention as unlawful. On February 1st, a judge ordered their immediate release, and they returned to Minnesota that same day. Their journey through a broken immigration system is far from over, but Liam and his dad are back home today thanks to a habeas corpus petition filed on their behalf.
Excerpt from Judge Biery’s decision:
Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.
Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration's detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.
Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.
What Changed?
To understand why the federal courts are being flooded with these petitions, you need to understand how immigration detention policy changed last year.
In July 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy shifted to “reinterpret” federal law in a way that severely limits who is eligible for a bond hearing in immigration court. ICE now considers anyone who has entered the United States ‘without inspection’ at an official border checkpoint — even if that entry was 20 or 30 years ago — ineligible for a bond hearing.
In September 2025, the DOJ’s Board of Immigration Appeals strengthened this policy through a precedent decision, Matter of Yajure Hurtado, which effectively stripped immigration judges of their authority to grant bond.
Combined with other enforcement policy changes emphasizing ‘maximum detention’, the ICE detention population has ballooned to over 70,000 people in at least 225 different facilities across the country.
The Human Cost
There’s an obvious, immense human cost borne by every person detained by ICE. For a growing number, the cost of life in detention has led to an incredibly difficult decision: voluntary departure. The situation is so bleak that a growing number of people are choosing to give up on their day in court and leaving this country (and their lives) behind.
One attorney in Texas who regularly handles these cases described the dynamic at play:
“Justice deferred is really justice denied, because clients give up, they give up hope. When they’re in illegal detention for three or four months or six months, they suffer there.”
A Constitutional Failsafe
This is where habeas corpus comes in.
The idea is simple: if you’re arrested, you have the right to go before a judge and ask that the government justify why you’re being held. It’s supposed to be a last-resort protection and a failsafe against illegal detention when other options have been exhausted. But for tens of thousands of immigrants in ICE custody today, it’s the only option.
Without access to normal channels for seeking administrative relief through the immigration court system, attorneys are filing habeas petitions to argue their clients’ detention violates their due process rights under the Constitution.
The good news? It’s working.
Attorneys report success rates above 90% in some jurisdictions. As of early 2026, more than 200 federal judges have ruled that the government’s mandatory detention policy is illegal or a violation of individual rights.
Predictably, the government is trying to fight back, often in clear violation of federal judges’ orders — going so far as to deport people after judges have issued orders to halt their removal. But cracks in this effort are starting to show across the DOJ and DHS agencies responsible for this mess:
“‘The system sucks. This job sucks,’ Julie Le, an attorney representing the US attorney’s office in Minnesota, said in response to a federal judge’s questions on why ICE has repeatedly failed to comply with court orders.
‘I wish you would hold me in contempt so I would have a full 24 hours sleep,’ she added in comments that quickly went viral.
US district judge Jerry Blackwell had ordered Le, as well as assistant US attorney Ana Voss, to appear in his St Paul courtroom on Tuesday to explain why the DHS missed multiple deadlines to release five detainees who the judge said never should have been arrested in the first place.”
But the volume of people currently in detention + data we already have on typical rates of legal representation in immigration courts + the impossible workload capacity for attorneys taking on these cases tells us most individuals currently in ICE custody won’t have access to an attorney.
That’s an obvious problem for a legal system that conveniently blends heavy-handed jailing without the guarantees otherwise granted to someone held for a criminal violation. For more on the system-level strain, from Block Club Chicago:
For most families, hiring a private attorney isn’t a “realistic” option, Bob Glaves, the executive director of the Chicago Bar Foundation, wrote in an email. Families seeking private help could be looking at several thousand dollars or more in legal fees, he wrote. Zwick said many people file the petitions pro se — for themselves — without a lawyer at all.
But without representation, detainees risk “being quickly deported, sometimes to a country other than their country of origin or may be pressured by the conditions of confinement into agreeing to leave the country, often leaving family behind with no other means of support,” Glaves wrote.
Procedural Nightmare
One thing about habeas petitions: they’re brutally technical.
To file properly, the attorney — or the person in detention, if they file pro se (without attorney representation) — needs to navigate a maze of procedural requirements that vary by circuit, district, and sometimes even individual judge. Get one detail wrong, like naming the wrong government official or missing a jurisdiction-specific requirement, and the case can be dismissed before a judge even has a chance to review.
With the urgency involved, these mistakes can be the difference between a quick release from custody and months living in inhumane conditions, or even expedited deportation.
Some examples of what attorneys have to track:
Who do you sue?
In some courts, you typically name the ICE Field Office Director (FOD) as the primary respondent. In others, it’s the warden of the detention facility. Some federal circuits are flexible in who is named, others are not.Where’s your client being held, and which federal district has jurisdiction?
The facilities used for immigration detention aren’t distributed evenly across states or jurisdictions. An attorney in California might have a client who’s transferred overnight to a facility in Louisiana. The habeas petition must be filed in the district where the client is currently detained.Which ICE field office has jurisdiction of the facility?
There are over 220 detention facilities across the country today holding ICE detainees. Each facility is assigned to one of ICE’s 25 field offices based on ‘area of responsibility’. Attorneys need to know where their client is, which field office has authority over that location, and the responsible ICE FO director’s name and exact title.How long has your client been detained?
This isn’t as simple as it sounds. Many clients have been detained across multiple ‘episodes’ — released, re-detained, moved between facilities, etc. Attorneys need to calculate detention durations accurately (and account for gaps and transfers) to create an accurate detention timeline that aligns with the petition’s legal arguments.What are the circuit-specific rules about exhaustion and procedural requirements?
Some circuits recognize futility doctrines: when a bond hearing is pointless because of a policy change, you don’t have to request one first. But other circuits still require you to ‘exhaust’ every administrative remedy before filing in federal court, even if it’s futile. The legal precedent (and case workflow) can vary dramatically.
Right now, most immigration attorneys maintain all of this information in spreadsheets, Google Docs, email threads, or their own working memory. They manually look up Field Office Directors on ICE’s website, cross-reference facility databases, calculate detention periods by hand, and cite circuit precedent from old templates and frantic research.
What We’re Building
The Habeas Rabbit is designed to handle some of this complexity, allowing attorneys to focus on the legal arguments and their clients’ stories instead of procedural gotchas.
Here’s what the prototype is ready to handle:
Track detention episodes across multiple facilities and automatically calculate whether the client is approaching or has exceeded the 180-day Zadvydas threshold.
Determine the correct respondents based on the facility location and circuit precedent (all 11 federal circuits plus D.C.).
Map facilities to Field Office Directors with the official titles needed for court filings.
Generate properly formatted habeas petitions as Word documents with all the correct legal citations and formatting.
The initial prototype handles the core petition creation workflow, but the real work comes with the rest of the roadmap:
Tracking pre-habeas workflows, like administrative POCR (“Post-Order Custody Review”) and bond hearing requests, so attorneys have a complete record when preparing the habeas petition.
Refining our deadline engine to automatically (and proactively) calculate critical dates and send reminders to avoid work falling through the cracks as attorneys quickly scale how many of these cases they’re actively handling.
Generating the full suite of court documents, including summons, certificate of service, civil cover sheet, and emergency motion templates.
Supporting circuit-specific workflow variations to guide users on the steps required in their jurisdiction along with the reasoning (e.g. case law) behind the suggested variations.
Our roadmap then moves to more collaborative functionality. Finally, we’ll focus on integrating with calendar and case management systems to better support the full lifecycle of this work.
Our goal is to build transparently, and openly, to encourage broader collaboration. With this in mind, I’ve put together a public roadmap to illustrate what (and how) we’re building:
Habeas Rabbit
Admittedly, it’s a working title — and a nod to Liam C.R., the 5-year old who just returned home to Minnesota thanks to a successful habeas petition.
Thanks to now famous photos of masked agents taking him and his father from their home, Liam’s adorable blue bunny hat quickly became one of the most recognizable symbols of public resistance in the face of the federal government’s campaign of terror in Minnesota.
And Liam’s last name? His apellido paterno (the first of two last names) is Conejo, which means rabbit in Spanish.
But why Habeas Rabbit?
There are more than 70,000 other children and adults in ICE custody today. Many are poised to spend the next months (or years) in custody as they wait for their turn in a backlogged court system for alleged civil immigration violations. That’s simply not acceptable.
This tool is designed for attorneys and advocates to quickly and accurately prepare (and track) the casework needed to get ahead of government maneuvering. By building the backend data and process mapping, our goal is to help scale existing efforts across the country to challenge unlawful detention in ICE facilities.
Basically, we’re building the infrastructure for legal teams to effectively “hop” across jurisdictional constraints and policy barriers to scale access to justice.
A habeas rabbit.
What’s Next
I’ve been meeting with immigration attorneys and nonprofit leaders to understand how they’re handling these cases today and gathering feedback on what we’re building.
If you know an attorney who has filed a habeas petition for someone in ICE custody recently, please let them know I’d love to connect and learn more about their experience.
For everyone else, I’ll be writing more about this in the coming weeks: what this surge in habeas petitions reveals about our immigration system, how the courts (and ICE) are responding, and the real world impact on thousands of individuals and families caught in the middle.
I’m also working on posts covering:
significant updates on ICE’s 287(g) program this week, and growing resistance to ICE’s local partnership programs.
a breakdown of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and its ongoing shift from the administrative agency responsible for reviewing millions of immigration applications, to recruiting for ‘Homeland Defender’ positions and creating an armed ‘special agent’ unit.
Thanks for your patience during a quiet week, and as always for reading this far.
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I love everything about this idea and the title. Plus, I think the rabbit features in a lot of American/Andean mythology as a clever trickster and I think that’s the energy folks have to bring to this fight.