Many are challenging their detention using habeas corpus filings only to be arrested again, in violation of court orders

Immigrants who have been granted release from detention after winning habeas corpus petitions in court are being re-arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Guardian has identified at least 20 cases nationwide relating to people who were detained after being released on habeas corpus petition in the last year, according to court records, attorneys and media reports.

Increasing arrests and detentions have led to immigrants filing more than 91,000 habeas petitions as they seek to challenge their detentions, according to research by ProPublica. More petitions have been filed since 25 January than during the past three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term, combined, the outlet found.

A petition of habeas corpus – Latin for “you shall have a body” – challenges in a federal court the government’s right to hold someone in custody while their main legal case is proceeding.

But in a new development, people are winning their release only to find themselves quickly detained again.

“We’ve seen a very, very sharp increase in people who are released on habeas petitions, only to be very rapidly re-detained, often in violation of the federal court’s order,” said Bridget Pranzatelli, an attorney with the National Immigration Project.

One of her clients, Akram Mahmoud Omar, a 77-year-old Palestinian man who suffered a heart attack while detained in “Camp 57”, the ICE detention facility within Louisiana’s notorious state prison in Angola, was arrested again by ICE within 10 days of being released following a habeas petition, as first reported by the Intercept.

And in Minnesota, seven immigrants were re-detained before even exiting the Whipple federal building detention facility on the outskirts of Minneapolis, as first reported by MPR.

“I don’t think being taken out of a building and directly into the arms of four or more officers complies with the court’s order,” Daniel Suitor, attorney to two of the men, said in a phone interview .

Courts are taking notice. In an October ruling, the 10th US circuit court of appeals in Colorado denied the government’s attempt to dismiss a habeas petition on the grounds that they had the power to re-detain the petitioner. The government had a previous “demonstrated pattern of re-detaining” non-citizens who had been granted habeas relief, according to the court.

In Louisiana, in the case of another client of Pranzatelli, a federal judge held a senior federal immigration official in contempt of court for violating orders, demanding Ibrahim Mohammed’s release after he had been re-arrested three times by ICE, as first reported by the Banner. Two other federal judges, in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, have also held federal immigration authorities in contempt or threatened to do so.

Attorneys believe that certain re-detentions are connected to the Trump administration’s push to deport people to third countries.

“It’s really tethered to the explosion of third country agreements with primarily African nations in the past four months,” said Susanna Booth, senior attorney at Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, based in Washington DC.

The Trump administration is increasingly sending immigrants who cannot be removed to their home countries, either because the country will not accept them or they have protections from being deported there, to another country entirely, where they don’t hold citizenship and often have no ties. In the past, these immigrants were essentially safe from deportation.

“They just can’t be removed to the countries that are listed on the ‘withholding of removal’ order, but they can be removed to third countries,” Nora Ahmed, director of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said. “And that has always been the law. It’s just that it wasn’t practiced.”

More than 25,000 non-citizens have been deported from the US to countries that are not their own, despite potentially facing torture or persecution. Often, they are being incarcerated in prisons or detained in secured hotels and pressured to return to their home countries, which human rights experts say violates the Convention Against Torture.

“Say you win [your petition], but then [the government] is like ‘Well, that’s fine because then we can just send them to Liberia,’ it just kind of feels like you’re playing Whac-a-Mole with every country in the world,” Booth said.

In the current political climate, attorneys are eager for judges to grant habeas petitions that prevent the government from easily re-detaining and deporting a client.

“The court will say, for example, ‘The government needs to give us at least three days’ notice if they’re trying to remove this person [again],’” said Tess Hellgren, an attorney with the National Immigration Project. “It might not sound like much, but that’s actually quite a bit in cases,” she said, where the government may be attempting to immediately put someone on a flight out of the US.

Booth also has two clients who were rearrested, threatened with deportation to two countries in Africa, to which they had no ties, only to be released after a second habeas filing. She says her practice preemptively prepares second habeas petitions to file immediately before clients are moved to a different state from where they were detained, in order to prevent clients being trapped in courts with less permissive judges.

In September, an appeals court ruled that the Trump administration had to provide sufficient notice of third-country deportations and allow immigrants to contest their removals. Shortly after, the six-justice conservative majority of the supreme court granted an emergency stay of the ruling, allowing the Trump administration to continue quickly deporting immigrants to third countries, without issuing an explanation.

Additionally, some immigrants facing third country removals who won withholding of removal are now eligible for asylum after a court overruled a Biden-era policy prohibiting most people who crossed the US-Mexico border unlawfully from obtaining asylum.

Joseph Giardina, a Louisiana immigration attorney, had two Egyptian clients who were protected under withholding of removal. They were re-detained weeks after being released on habeas, and threatened with deportation – but then granted asylum.

The Trump administration knows “[the Biden-era rule] was the only reason they were not granted asylum”, Giardina said, “and they are doing their damnedest to deport them as quickly as they possibly can to another country”.

Yet many people are being re-arrested with no apparent plans for deportation, leaving them stranded in detention indefinitely. Courts are also taking months to adjudicate the thousands of habeas cases, particularly in Louisiana and Texas where many detention centers are located, according to an analysis by Bolts and New Orleans-based outlet the Lens, and the Texas Tribune. And the fear of re-detention risks further trauma for their clients and families, attorneys say.

“We can sort of win the battle, but we’re going to lose the war. Because in the long run, they’re still going to be able to do what they want to do, which is arrest people and hold them for long periods of time,” said Jonah Eaton, an UnLocal litigation attorney who has filed habeas suits for immigration detainees.