Immigration Habeas Filings Jump 250% in North Texas After Policy Shift, Judge Says

Facing a “tsunami of litigation” driven by the Trump administration’s expansive classification of noncitizens as “applicants for admission” — making them ineligible for bond — lawyers and judges in the Northern District of Texas have “answered the call,” with attorneys stepping forward to represent immigrants on a pro bono basis and with judges working around the clock to issue timely, thoughtful orders, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix said Friday during closing remarks at the district’s annual Bench Bar Conference, held this year in Arlington.  

Last year, the Trump administration broke from nearly 30 years of practice by invoking Section 1225 of the Immigration and Nationality Act to argue that many noncitizens targeted for deportation — including those who have lived in the U.S. for years — must remain detained without bond while their removal cases proceed. 

Immigrants denied bond in immigration courts, which fall under the executive branch, have increasingly turned to the federal judiciary, resulting in the filing of tens of thousands of habeas corpus petitions in district courts nationwide. Two federal appellate courts have sided with the administration, and many expect the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue. 

Judge Hendrix, a Lubbock-based appointee of President Donald Trump, said the Northern District has seen a “250 percent increase in petitions for habeas corpus in civil immigration cases.” 

Judge Hendrix, who claimed to be the first federal judge in Texas to conclude the law requires mandatory detention, praised his fellow judges in the district for providing “deep analysis of the text and the relevant precedent” even when reaching different conclusions, rather than going with the flow, as he said some courts have done.  

You may read Judge Hendrix’s remarks below:

For three decades, the federal government declined to exercise mandatory detention. So instead, they provided bond hearings under Section 1226, even to aliens who illegally crossed the border and were later placed into removal proceedings. Section 1225, the mandatory detention provision, just largely fell by the wayside. 

But that all changed last summer. In July of 2025, the United States Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Department of Justice, revisited its legal position and concluded that section 1225, not 1226, is the applicable immigration detention authority for all applicants for admission. Soon after that, the Board of Immigration Appeals agreed with the government’s interpretation in a case called Yajure Hurtado which requires now immigration judges throughout the country to deny bond hearings for that category of alien for lack of jurisdiction. So as we stand here today, aliens who are present in the United States without admission, even if they’ve been present without admission for decades, must be detained under this section of 1225, while their removal proceedings play out. 

Now under Supreme Court precedent, aliens would challenge immigration petition through a petition for habeas corpus in their district of confinement. So as you might imagine, this shift in policy prompted a tsunami of litigation. Here are the numbers: In 2023, there were nine total petitions for habeas corpus in civil immigration cases districtwide. Between 2024 and 2025, petitioners filed 176 cases districtwide. That’s a significant increase on its own, but it’s nothing like what the bench faces now.

Since last September alone, after the Board of Immigration Appeals decided Yajure Hurtado, the Northern District has received over 625 new immigration habeas petitions. For those keeping track, that’s over a 250 percent increase, and the number grows every day. 

To be sure, this development is not unique to the Northern District of Texas. Other federal district courts are also seeing an influx of immigration habeas cases. If there is an ICE detention facility in a district, chances are that habeas petitions are quickly getting the dockets of those federal district judges. Nationwide, the number of these petitions is over 30,000. So, as you might imagine, this wave of new cases has posed a case management challenge for your court, especially while the judges are also trying to process their typical civil cases and criminal cases.

Hundreds of petitioners want to be heard, and yet many of them have not been able to afford a lawyer. Here’s the window into our bar. The Northern District bar, perhaps even some folks in this room, quickly stepped up, providing pro bono legal services to petitioners detained in facilities throughout Texas. Of the over 625 petitions that I mentioned earlier, two-thirds of them were filed by counsel. 

Government attorneys have also answered the call. The United States Attorney’s Office has worked overtime to respond to the Court’s show-cause orders, and to do so, they’ve collaborated with their ICE and DHS colleagues to provide the court with timely and accurate information about the status of pending petitions. 

Your bench rose to the bar and to the challenge as well. Your judges have officially processed countless cases, many of which include late-night motions for emergency temporary restraining orders. In fact, no immigration habeas petition appeared on any of your judges’ six-month lists, which is the public accounting of all motions that have been pending for six months or more.

Most importantly, the court met this challenge without glossing over petitioners or the law. For some context, judges in hundreds of cases across the country have concluded that the government’s mandatory detention policy departs from the INA and the Constitution. Many do so based on the government’s former practice of affording bond hearings to applicable applicants for admission under Section 1226. Those orders are often short and have little in the way of analysis. Other judges have said, essentially, ‘Look, we’ve always done it this way. We’re not going to change it now.’ Even more judges have said, ‘Well, look, now, hundreds of judges have reached that conclusion. They must be right. I’m just going to go with them.’ 

Not the Northern District of Texas. Your bench rolled up its sleeves and got to work. Now, while the conclusions have been varied among the judges in the district, the orders have provided deep analysis of the text and the relevant precedent. Whereas other courts have often granted habeas petitions without much analysis or explanation, the Northern District took every petition on its own terms, crafting individualized responses when petitioners deviated from a handful of template petitions that flooded courts across the country. 

What’s more, the court has bolstered its case law on the propriety of temporary restraining orders in the immigration context. As several of my colleagues and I have explained, a TRO is not a backdoor for obtaining an expedited ruling on the ultimate relief sought in the petition, which is immediate release for a bond hearing. A TRO is meant to preserve the status quo – nothing more, nothing less. 

On the merits, the Northern District has paved the way for those judges whose commitment to textualism may lead to unpopular results. For example, I was the first federal judge in Texas to conclude that section 1225(b)(2)(A) does, indeed, require bondless detention for aliens who are present in the United States without admission. 

Now I know that there are lawyers in this room who disagree deeply with that result, and that it diverges from hundreds of my colleagues across the country, and that’s okay. 

The rule of law requires a strict adherence to the statutory text, even when the outcome is unsatisfying to some and even when the past practice has been to the contrary. And now I am not alone.

Several other judges in the Northern District reached the same conclusion and began denying immigration petitions despite resounding criticism. 

To be clear, I welcome criticism and commentary. That said, I do think the criticism falls flat. 

In February, the Fifth Circuit held, and published opinion, that the government’s interpretation of the INA is the correct one. Applicants for admission must be detained without bond under Section 1225. Weeks later, the Eighth Circuit followed suit, reaching the same conclusion. 

So our critics have overwhelmingly painted the mandatory detention policy as outlandish. It was not so divorced from reality as to draw the ire of two federal circuit courts.

Obviously, this story is far from over. Given the burden that these cases have placed on the federal judiciary, as well as the difference of opinion among the district courts, the Supreme Court is likely to address this issue sooner rather than later. 

And after the Fifth Circuit case that I mentioned … there are judges, including judges, especially in the Western District of Texas, who are still granting immigration habeas petitions on due process grounds. Cases implicating that argument, which was not squarely addressed in the prior Fifth Circuit case, are set for argument at the Fifth Circuit [this] week. 

But thus far, a few things are clear. One, the bench and bar in the Northern District of Texas are not afraid of a little hard work. Two, the bench and the bar are committed to textualism and the rule of law. And third, your bench is not one to simply go with the flow, eluding independent and impartial analysis for comfort in numbers, and I, for one, am grateful to be a small part of that community. So, to the lawyers, thank you so much for your service to the court in helping us process this enormous topic. To the bench, we … get back to work.