06/29/2026
"The about-face is purely a new interpretation of an unchanged statute."
If an undocumented person is now taken into custody, without committing ANY crime, they are being held in jail without the possibility of being released on a bond (in our 7th Circuit/Chicago Immigration Court). Compare that with a person being charged with murder in a standard criminal court. Their bond may be $1,000.000, but they at least have a right to a bond.
Immigration judges right now are being instructed (under threat of termination if they do not toe the line) that they have no jurisdiction to even consider bond. They cannot even consider a $1,000,000 bond to a person who may have only a parking meter violation on their record. Or ZERO record at all. It's really impossible to wrap your head around.
So what is our only option? We have to get our federal judiciary involved. We have to file habeas corpus petitions to get folks released.
And that quote above is from one of our judges in Wisconsin in their holding granting our Habeas Corpus law suit. As the judge stated, and I'm paraphrasing here, this bu****it ("about-face") counters 30+ years of how a law passed by Congress has been interpreted. It's bu****it, and everyone involved in these cases (including DHS attorneys) know it. But, we are forced to file federal suits as a result.
I have filed several of these suits since December. They have all been granted. I'm not special...attorneys across the nation are getting these granted daily. But they take time, sometimes a month or more. And in that time, you cannot imagine the damage to these folks' families and children.
I find great solace in knowing that the judiciary still gives a s**t about applying the laws to the facts. This is not complicated stuff, from the perspective of statutory review.
Onward.