10 April 16th - April 22nd, 2026 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | ALWAYS IN YOUR FEED. FOLLOW US templates, pays the $5 filing fee and delivers the filing to the court. And, like in Yu’s case, they started winning. More filings, more wins Generally, habeas petitions are filed for detainees in two situations: Those who have removal orders, and those who have what’s called a withholding of removal orders. If a detainee has a removal order, the government has 180 days after detaining them to remove them from the country before it’s considered “unreasonable” to keep them in detention, Green said. If the detention spans past that time, a habeas petition may result in a federal judge ordering a detainee’s release if “the govern- ment can’t show that you’re going to be deported within a reasonably foreseeable time,” Green said. The government is often unable to “effectuate” a detainee’s removal in that timeframe if the U.S. doesn’t have strong diplomatic relationships with that country, said Philip Rody, the managing attorney for the Florence Project. Before ICE can deport a detainee, it must coordinate with the indi- vidual’s country of origin and have certain travel documents, such as a temporary pass- port. That’s largely what was holding up Yu’s deportation to China. “U.S. judges don’t let you stay an unlim- ited time in detention,” Green said. Habeas petitions for those with with- holding of removal orders are more complicated. Under Biden-era immigration rules, if migrants passed through another country on their way to the U.S., they had to apply for asylum in that pass-through country; otherwise, they were not eligible for asylum in the U.S. However, if an immigration judge found that such an asylum seeker has a “credible fear or persecution in your home country,” Rody said, the judge can order the migrant to be removed but bar the govern- ment from acting on it unless they can prove that conditions in the migrant’s home country have significantly changed. That’s the situation that Nicaraguan immigrant Jose Suarez Chavez is facing right now. He entered the U.S. in November 2022 and was denied asylum and ordered to be deported. But in July, according to court documents, an immigration judge granted him a withholding of removal. Less than a month later, ICE deported him to Mexico, where he was “kidnapped, raped and subjected to sex trafficking” before he returned to the U.S. “out of fear for his life,” according to a filing in his federal habeas corpus petition. Since then, he’s been detained in ICE’s Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex. Chavez’s habeas petition, filed on April 1, is still pending. His immigration attorney did not immediately respond to inquiries from Phoenix New Times. Prior to the Trump administration, people like Chavez would typically have been paroled into the U.S. until something changed in their cases. But now, they’re spending months and months in ICE lockup as the government tries to “remove them to a third country, a country that they have no connection to,” Rody said. So far, the results of habeas petitions have been generally effective. In 2025, federal judges ruled in favor of detained immigrants in roughly 97% of decided habeas cases, according to recent federal court tracking data. Petition filings have skyrocketed since then. For example, 10 habeas cases were filed in Arizona district court on March 4 alone. A judge ruled in favor of the detained person 60% of those cases, either granting the detainee full release or ordering a bond hearing, which the government must provide within seven days. Of the other habeas petitions filed that day, three remain active and one was dismissed. Not a magic bullet Habeas petitions may be successfully springing more ICE detainees, but they’re not a cure-all. Things have slowed down more recently due to the high number of habeas petitions. In March, magistrate judges began to be assigned to habeas cases to meet that demand. Some cases are resolved in weeks, while others take months. How quickly decisions are made in these cases depends on the judge, Rody said. Some judges “feel the need to act very quickly on these petitions” and only give the government a few days to respond, Rody said, while other judges are giving the government as many as 20 days. “It’s kind of the luck of the draw,” he said. “Are you going to get a judge that moves things along? Or is this going to be a more lengthy process?” Even if a federal judge rules in favor of a detainee, that doesn’t mean that person is out of the woods — or even out of deten- tion. A federal judge may order a bond hearing, but those are heard by immigra- tion judges, who are not part of the judi- ciary branch but work instead for the Department of Justice. Thus, it’s less likely that immigration judges will grant a reasonable bond amount, several immigra- tion attorneys said. After going through the “hoops and hurdles of forcing this bond hearing,” immigration attorneys are seeing bond set at “crazy high prices” or seeing it being denied entirely, Villalpando said. “The justification is usually (that a detainee is a) flight risk,” she added. “No amount of bond will satisfy that risk.” If a detainee isn’t able to be released via bond, it’s basically back to the drawing board for immigration attorneys and their clients. And if a detainee is released, like Yu was, that may not be the end of it. A habeas petition doesn’t protect a released detainee from being detained again — or deported. “If the government tried to make the argument like, ‘OK, we think we can remove her now,’ they can be detained at any time,” Villalpando said. “And again, just to like sit for a couple of months (in detention). And then, if nothing happens, do another habeas to try to get them out.” Last Resort from p 8
