{"id":78225,"date":"2026-04-19T10:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T10:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/04\/19\/ordered-free-yet-locked-up-judge-angry-over-ice-detention\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T10:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T10:24:14","slug":"ordered-free-yet-locked-up-judge-angry-over-ice-detention-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/2026\/04\/19\/ordered-free-yet-locked-up-judge-angry-over-ice-detention-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Ordered free, yet locked up: Judge angry over ICE detention"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Judge Troy Nunley was fed up. <\/p>\n

Federal immigration officials have once again violated a man’s rights by detaining him in a detention center in a California city, days after Nunley ordered his release. When he was finally freed, the man was thrown out into the street without a passport, driver’s license or other personal belongings. The judge’s demand for the return of the items was met with silence. <\/p>\n

And so on Tuesday, Chief Judge Nunley of the Eastern District of California imposed an official sanction and a $250 fine on Justice Department lawyer Jonathan Yu. <\/p>\n

Nunley explained in a sharp order why he was forced to take such a rare step. The fines may be less than some traffic tickets, but it is almost unheard of for a judge to formally reprimand a public prosecutor. <\/p>\n

By Yu’s own admission, he was a workaholic. In his order, Nunley reiterated the lawyer’s claim that he had been assigned more than 300 almost identical cases in the last three months, all of whom were detained immigrants who argued that they were detained without any reason. <\/p>\n

Court filings show that many of the California cases involve longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly being taken to jail after routine checks with immigration authorities. Was an Afghan who helped the American war effort. Another Cambodian grandmother of eight who fled Pol Pot’s 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, his only hope for release is to petition for a writ of habeas corpus \u2014 a legal maneuver once typically reserved for death row inmates and suspected terrorists \u2014 leaving the nation’s busiest federal courts inundated with thousands of emergency lawsuits. <\/p>\n

Trump administration lawyers said they were trying to “triage” the situation, but Nunley found that he repeatedly failed to comply, leaving people with the right to move freely stuck behind bars. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe court does not agree,\u201d he wrote in issuing the ban. <\/p>\n

The order comes days after Nunley took the unusual step of declaring a “judicial emergency” 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 past year, the Eastern District has received more petitions from immigration detainers than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States: more than 2,700 since January, compared to less than 500 the year before and only 18 in 2024. Similar crises are playing out elsewhere, with federal courts in Minnesota briefly shutdown amid the Trump administration’s enforcement assault last winter.<\/p>\n

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Detainees are seen behind a fence at the 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 that dealing with the increase in activity since last summer has been “like getting hit over the head with a bat”. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been up all night dealing with these cases,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

So far this year, six active judges in the Eastern District have ordered the release of nearly 2,000 people.<\/p>\n

“The majority of the cases we see are cases where people should not be detained,” Nunley said. “They should get a hearing to determine whether they should stay in this country or not, and until they get a hearing, they should be free.” <\/p>\n

Since last July, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered that all immigrants arrested be subject to “mandatory detention” \u2014 a policy that previously applied only to people caught at the border. <\/p>\n

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

\u201cThis is a huge change in the way the government reads the law,\u201d said Mai Khanh Ngo, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project. \u201cAlmost every judge who has looked at this has agreed that these people should get bail, and yet thousands are still in custody.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Elizabeth Vega, 15, and Darlene Rumualdo, 15, of Torres High School, join labor organizers, clergy leaders and immigrant rights groups to protest immigration raids across the country at La Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles on January 23, 2026.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

“People are locked up in the same facilities that hold people accused of crimes, people who have been convicted of crimes… and then you’re telling people you have no chance of getting out,” Ngo said. \u201cDetaining people and not giving them a chance to get out of detention is a way to force people to give up their claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

“When immigration cases dropped in our district, we were hit harder than any other district outside of West Texas,” Nunley said. “In the beginning we had more cases than anyone else.” <\/p>\n

Today, the data was compiled by ProPublica and legal activist groups including Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative<\/a> Show that about a quarter of the approximately 30,000 active habeas petitions in the United States are in California courts. Nunnally’s own tables show half of California’s cases are in his district, where stepped-up enforcement, a large population of immigrant workers and the density of detention centers have led to a flood of detainer petitions. <\/p>\n

The cases depend on the Constitution’s guarantee of due process before being deprived of life, liberty or property. But in some cases, the government has argued that “the Fifth Amendment does not apply” to detained immigrants, according to court filings.<\/p>\n

DOJ lawyers who responded to the independence bid now routinely complain that they are being crushed under paperwork.<\/p>\n

Judges, accustomed to getting government lawyers to follow their orders, have become angry. <\/p>\n

In the Central District of California, which includes L.A. and surrounding areas, Judge Sunshine Sykes wrote a fiery decision earlier this year saying the Trump administration is “wreaking terror against non-citizens.” <\/p>\n

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

\u201cICE has the law and the facts, and it follows all court rulings unless they are ultimately overruled by the nation’s highest court,\u201d a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email to The Times.<\/p>\n

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A woman holding a sign reading “ICE is not welcome here!” Sign a vigil in San Pedro in January.<\/p>\n

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

Lawyers fighting to release people jailed under the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy say they were initially ill-equipped for these legal battles because they used to be extremely rare. <\/p>\n

According to Gene Reese, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic, most federal judges had seen only a few habeas petitions before last summer \u2014 then suddenly they had hundreds of requests for immediate relief. <\/p>\n

Reese said efforts are being made to train pro bono law groups to effectively argue detainee cases, “but it takes a while to get up to speed.”<\/p>\n

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A federal agent tells residents to leave after shots were fired during an immigration enforcement operation in Willowbrook on January 21, 2026.<\/p>\n

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

At the same time, Reese said, lawyers are pressuring judges overseeing cases to act faster, because endless procedural delays ensure that people remain in jail.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost habeas petitions involve a motion for temporary restraining orders, and this requires an emergency decision from the courts, which requires the courts to act very quickly,\u201d Reese said. <\/p>\n

In California’s federal district courts, the backlog remains in the thousands. Nunley said the system is struggling to reduce the number of cases. <\/p>\n

“There’s nothing that says non-citizens should not be entitled to due process,” Nunley said. “These are our people, they live in our district. They deserve the same due process that you and I deserve.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judge Troy Nunley was fed up. Federal immigration officials have once again violated a man’s rights by detaining him in a detention center in a California city, days after Nunley ordered his release. When he was finally freed, the man was thrown out into the street without a passport, driver’s license or other personal belongings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2557,2985,303,2929,497,8906,4475],"class_list":["post-78225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bible-verse","tag-angry","tag-detention","tag-free","tag-ice","tag-judge","tag-locked","tag-ordered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78270,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78225\/revisions\/78270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}