Illegally detained immigrants are fighting back. Thousands of petitions have been filed in the central San Joaquin Valley

Thanks to an obscure legal maneuver being popularized during the current Trump Administration, more immigrants caught in the snares of ICE are finding their way out of detention, for now.

Sixteen people were released on May 2 from the Fresno Enforcement and Removal Operations office after previously being held at Central Valley Annex, the newly opened detention center in McFarland, Elizabeth Lopez, communications and development coordinator at Faith in the Valley shared with Fresnoland. 

After weeks stuck in deportation limbo, many immigrants leave detention exhausted and traumatized, longing for showers, hot meals and rides home to places like Fresno and Merced, grateful simply to return to their families. 

Their release often comes through habeas corpus petitions, a once obscure legal tool now increasingly used under President Donald Trump’s national crackdown as a last light in the dark for immigrants and U.S. citizens trapped in remote detention centers.

Each successful ruling means a judge is finding the government lacks legal justification to keep someone detained, allowing courts to order their release from custody.  

Lopez said volunteers with the Valley Watch Network greeted those released with hygiene supplies, undergarments, snacks, water and transportation while also ensuring immigrants received the paperwork and personal belongings needed to travel. 

Volunteers have been accompanying people flying home by staying with them through TSA screening, she said. Lopez added that many of those released had been transferred from out of state, though four out of the six people released May 5 were from Merced and Fresno counties.

Immigrants detained in Kern County ICE facilities and across the Central Valley, home to four of the state’s eight detention centers, have filed habeas petitions at some of the highest rates in the country since last year, according to analysis by ProPublica. 

Around 3,929 writs of habeas corpus have been filed in the Eastern District of California since January 2025, according to updated data from ProPublica as of May 7.

In immigration cases, people are usually required to pursue other options for release before filing a habeas petition. But attorneys say expanded mandatory detention policies under Trump have left many immigrants unable to access bond hearings or other typical avenues for release. 

Immigration attorneys also say stricter legal interpretations and increased enforcement have sharply increased the number of people in detention. As a result, more people are turning directly to federal court through habeas petitions, creating thousands of additional filings in a court system already backed up with more cases than calendar days

How detained immigrants are filing habeas petitions on their own 

More habeas cases were filed in the first 13 months of Trump’s second administration than in the previous three administrations combined, according to analysis by ProPublica. 

The backlog of cases and lawyers experienced with habeas petitions has forced some in custody to take on the system themselves, directly. Fresnoland spoke with one such self-described “jailhouse lawyer,” an unofficial designation for the inmate who had no legal formal background but, since his imprisonment, has filed nearly a dozen petitions, becoming a key resource for some other inmates stuck in limbo.

Fresnoland is identifying the incarcerated person only as B.A.H as he fears retaliation from guards and federal prosecutors. 

From inside facilities, he has filed about 10 habeas corpus petitions on behalf of fellow detained immigrants—several of which, he said, have led to releases.

“This administration is trying to take away the freedom of the people in one way or another,” said B.A.H. in a phone interview with Fresnoland. “They break their own laws, constitutions, and they’re aware of it.” 

Now held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center after spending more than three years at Golden State Annex in Kern County, he taught himself how to prepare these filings using limited materials from the detention center library and information shared through outside legal groups.

His work has taken shape in an environment where many detained immigrants lack legal representation and up-to-date information about immigration law. Inside detention, access to legal resources is inconsistent, and people often rely on one another to understand rapidly changing policies and court rulings. 

He said he regularly helps others draft petitions and navigate the process, especially as the cost of hiring an attorney — often thousands of dollars for a habeas case — puts legal help out of reach for many families.

He said many of the people he assists are long-time U.S. residents and primary providers for their families. Some, he added, are being deported to countries they are not from or have not lived in for years. 

‘Shifting enforcement practices’

B.A.H. also described instances of detained immigrants who appear close to release or who have won habeas relief are instead scheduled for bond hearings with little advance notice, leaving them to represent themselves without time to prepare evidence or secure counsel.

The mounting barriers that detained immigrants face now are especially high as they try to file habeas petitions, according to Katie Kavanagh, senior attorney at the California Collaborative for Immigration Justice (CCIJ). 

Many people are held in under-resourced facilities that lack basic infrastructure such as reliable phone access or law libraries. Frequent transfers between facilities also disrupt informal support systems inside detention, breaking connections between detained immigrants who rely on one another for help navigating legal filings.

“We’ve basically seen this extreme and political narrowing of who is eligible for release and who is eligible for a bond hearing,” Kavanagh said. “The result is that the only legal recourse for the vast majority of people currently detained is a habeas corpus petition.”

She said these challenges are compounded by the complexity of federal court proceedings. Many immigrants who are detained are filing petitions without legal training, consistent access to legal materials, or fluency in English, making it difficult to fully present their claims.

Kavanagh said judges in the Eastern District of California have responded in mixed but often constructive ways. Some have shown frustration with the volume of cases and the limitations of self-filed petitions, but many are appointing attorneys and allowing amended filings so claims can be more fully developed. In some instances, judges have also taken a stricter stance with the government, including sanctioning attorneys who fail to comply with court orders.

She added that some judges are increasingly recognizing that immigration courts may not provide a meaningful opportunity for relief, making federal court intervention through habeas petitions a critical safeguard for due process.

Many Fresno attorneys are learning to file habeas petitions for the first time

Rosemary Gomez, a volunteer attorney with the Valley Watch Network, said she did not have prior experience filing habeas petitions. She is now in the process of training and completing the registration required to practice them in federal district court after nearly seven years of immigration law work.

She said habeas petitions were most often filed in two types of cases. One involves the expanded use of mandatory detention, including people who entered the U.S. without inspection years ago and had no prior contact with immigration authorities until recent enforcement actions. 

The other involves people who previously sought asylum at the border, were paroled and released into the community to continue their immigration cases, and are now being re-detained without any change in circumstances.

In September 2025, that distinction was effectively erased after a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling reclassified “interior” cases. Under the new interpretation, immigrants who have lived in the country for years can now be treated the same as people recently detained at the border, allowing them to be held without the opportunity for a bond hearing.

Gomez said through these changes, the work is challenging, particularly when clients do not have consistent representation in their underlying immigration cases and because habeas petitions move on extremely tight timelines, often requiring responses within three to seven days under federal court orders. 

At the same time, she noted increasing scrutiny of the process as the volume of cases grows, with courts and attorneys reporting heavier workloads and rising strain across the system.

“We’re just feeling that sense of overwhelm, and it feels like it’s sort of a deliberate effort on the part of the administration for it to be and feel this way,” Gomez said. “We’re seeing ourselves forced to do more habeas petitions, and it is a critical process, indeed, in sort of safeguarding the due process rights of immigrant community members who are finding themselves detained or in custody.”

Immigration lawyers, who typically practice in administrative immigration courts, are now having to learn federal district court procedures, evidentiary standards and habeas litigation, Gregory Olson, an immigration attorney at Cook & Olson said. 

At the same time, federal criminal defense attorneys experienced in habeas petitions are being pushed to learn immigration law to represent immigrants who are detained challenging prolonged detention without bond hearings. Olson said the convergence of the two legal systems has created confusion across both fields.

Olson said California’ Eastern District has become one of the regions hardest hit by the surge in habeas petitions, largely because of the concentration of immigration detention facilities in the Central Valley. Attorneys from Los Angeles, San Francisco and other parts of the state are now filing petitions in Sacramento and Fresno federal courts, he said.

Sudden transfers of incarcerated people are also compounding problems, with immigrants from Florida, Texas and Arizona landing abruptly in Central Valley immigration prisons. 

In many cases, he said, immigrants are moved so quickly that attorneys struggle to file habeas petitions before another transfer occurs.

‘Basic due process is missing’ 

Patience Milrod, former executive director of Central California Legal Services, argues that the vast majority of people in ICE detention today should be filing habeas petitions because basic due process is often missing. 

Milrod came to immigration habeas work after years of litigating petitions for people on death row. She now collaborates with the UFW Foundation, combining her habeas expertise with immigration attorneys’ client relationships “so we can get some people out of custody.”

“The theory of the Constitution is that the government does not pick you up out of your life and put you into prison unless they have a really damn good reason,” Milrod said. “The United States government, at the moment, does not bother with any of that. They just bring people up, frankly, based on racial profiling, which they deny and they just throw them in prison.”

These cases, Milrod said, often move quickly and require coordination between attorneys, but that work is complicated by limited access to clients held in remote detention facilities, where communication can be inconsistent.

“These are totally avoidable,” Milrod said. “The government could just do due process, and 99% of these habeas petitions would go away.”