Federal immigration officers had as soon as once more flouted his authority by conserving a person locked up in a California Metropolis detention heart after Nunley ordered him launched. When he was lastly let out, the person was booted onto the road with no passport, driver’s license or different private results. The choose’s demand that the gadgets be returned have been met with silence.
And so forth Tuesday, Nunley, the chief choose of the Jap District of California, slapped Division of Justice lawyer Jonathan Yu with an official sanction and a $250 high-quality.
In a scathing order, Nunley laid out why he was compelled to take such a uncommon step. The high-quality could have been lower than some visitors tickets, however it’s almost unheard for a choose to formally admonish a authorities lawyer.
By Yu’s personal admission, he was drowning in work. In his order, Nunley recounted the lawyer’s declare he’d been assigned greater than 300 almost an identical instances within the final three months, all of immigrants in detention who argued they have been being held with out trigger.
Court docket filings present many California instances contain longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly hauled off to jail after routine check-ins with immigration officers. One was an Afghan who’d helped the American battle effort. One other a Cambodian grandmother of eight who fled Pol Pot’s killing fields as a lady almost 50 years in the past.
Till final 12 months, most would have fought deportation on bond after a short listening to with an immigration choose. Now, their solely hope of launch is to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus — a authorized maneuver as soon as sometimes reserved for loss of life row inmates and suspected terrorists — inundating the nation’s busiest federal courts with 1000’s of emergency fits.
The Trump administration lawyer stated he was attempting to “triage” the state of affairs, however Nunley discovered he repeatedly did not comply, leaving folks with the proper to stroll free caught behind bars.
“The Court docket isn’t persuaded,” he wrote, issuing the sanctions.
The order got here days after Nunley took the weird step of saying a “judicial emergency” within the district, which covers almost half of California, stretching from the Oregon border to the Mojave Desert within the inland a part of the state, together with Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.
Within the final 12 months, the Jap District has acquired extra petitions from immigration detainees than virtually another jurisdiction in america: Greater than 2,700 since January, in comparison with fewer than 500 final 12 months and simply 18 in 2024. Comparable crises are taking part in out elsewhere, with federal courts in Minnesota briefly paralyzed amid the Trump administration’s enforcement blitz there final winter.
Individuals detained are seen behind fences at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.
(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP through Getty Pictures)
In an interview with The Instances, Nunley stated coping with the surge of exercise since final summer season has been “like being hit over the top with a bat.”
“We’re up all night time doing these instances,” he stated.
Up to now this 12 months, the Jap District’s six lively judges have ordered virtually folks 2,000 freed.
“Nearly all of the instances that we see are instances the place folks shouldn’t be detained,” Nunley stated. “They need to be receiving hearings to find out whether or not or not they’re to stay on this nation, and till they obtain these hearings, they need to be free.”
Since final July, the Division of Homeland Safety has ordered that each one immigrants it arrests are topic to “necessary detention” — a coverage that had beforehand solely utilized to these caught on the border.
The change got here 4 days after President Trump signed a spending invoice that earmarked $45 billion to increase the federal community of immigrant lockups.
“This has been a sea change in the way in which the federal government has learn the legislation,” stated My Khanh Ngo, a senior employees lawyer on the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Challenge. “Nearly each choose who has checked out this has agreed these folks ought to get bond, and but 1000’s of individuals are nonetheless sitting in detention.”
Elizabeth Vega, 15, proper, and Darlene Rumualdo, 15, from Torres Excessive College be part of labor organizers, clergy leaders and immigrant rights teams to protest immigration raids nationwide at La Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles on January 23, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Instances)
Longtime U.S. residents who may as soon as have fought elimination from house — the place they will extra simply collect proof to help their case and seek advice from attorneys — are as a substitute being held indefinitely.
Many don’t have any legal document. Some have been within the U.S. so lengthy that the nations they got here from not exist.
“Individuals are locked up in the identical services as folks accused of crimes, individuals who’ve been convicted of crimes … and then you definately’re telling folks, you don’t have any shot of getting out,” Ngo stated. “Detaining folks and never giving them the possibility to get out of detention is a manner of coercing folks to surrender their claims.”
The habeas course of can take weeks or months relying on the choose and the district.
“When the immigration instances dropped on our district, we received hit more durable than another outdoors West Texas,” Nunley stated. “Initially we had extra instances than anybody else.”
Right now, knowledge compiled by ProPublica and authorized activist teams together with the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative present virtually 1 / 4 of the roughly 30,000 lively habeas petitions in america are in California courts. Nunley’s personal tabulations present half the California instances are in his district, the place an ideal storm of stepped-up enforcement, a big inhabitants of immigrant employees and a focus of detention facilities produced a flash flood of habeas petitions.
The instances depend on the Structure’s assure of due course of earlier than being disadvantaged of life, liberty or property. However in keeping with courtroom filings, in some situations the federal government has argued “the Fifth Modification doesn’t apply” to detained immigrants.
DOJ attorneys responding to the bids for freedom now often complain they’re being crushed underneath paperwork.
Judges accustomed to having authorities attorneys adjust to their orders have been left fuming.
In California’s Central District, which incorporates L.A. and surrounding areas, Decide Sunshine Sykes wrote a fiery determination earlier this 12 months that stated the Trump administration is inflicting “terror towards noncitizens.”
Sykes is one in every of a number of federal judges throughout the nation which have tried to compel the federal government to renew bond hearings. The ninth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals blocked that call in March, leaving the habeas system in place for now. However with challenges or latest choices throughout a number of circuits, consultants say the combat is fated for the Supreme Court docket.
“ICE has the legislation and the details on its facet, and it adheres to all courtroom choices till it in the end will get them shot down by the best courtroom within the land,” a Homeland Safety spokesperson stated in an e mail to The Instances.
A girl holds a “ICE not welcome right here!” signal at a vigil in San Pedro in January.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Instances)
The attorneys preventing to free these jailed underneath the Trump administration’s necessary detention coverage say they weren’t initially geared up for these authorized battles as a result of they was exceedingly uncommon.
Most federal judges had solely seen a handful of habeas petitions earlier than final summer season — then all of a sudden they’d a whole lot of requests for pressing reduction, in keeping with Jean Reisz, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic.
Reisz stated there are efforts to get professional bono legislation teams educated on how one can successfully argue habeas instances, “however it takes some time to stand up to hurry.”
A federal agent asks residents to maneuver again after a capturing throughout an immigration enforcement operation in Willowbrook on January 21, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Instances)
On the identical time, Reisz stated, attorneys are pushing judges who oversee the instances to behave swiftly, since interminable procedural delays guarantee folks stay incarcerated.
“A lot of the habeas petitions embrace a movement for short-term restraining orders, and that requires emergency choices from the courts, which requires the courts to behave very quick,” Reisz stated.
In California’s federal district courts, the backlog stays 1000’s deep. Nunley stated the system is struggling to maintain up with the crush of instances.
“There’s nothing that claims that noncitizens shouldn’t be entitled to due course of,” Nunley stated. “These are our folks, they reside in our district. They’re entitled to the identical due course of that you simply and I are entitled to.”
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