Immigration attorney Bashir Ghazialam did a double take when he saw that one of his cases had been assigned to senior judge Leslie Kobayashi.
“When I saw the judge assignment after I filed the petition last week, I was surprised and I thought it might be some kind of fluke,” Ghazialam told HPR.
That's because Ghazialam is representing an immigrant in California, and Kobayashi is a federal judge for the District of Hawaii. Beginning this month, at least five federal judges in Hawai‘i have been assigned more than 40 immigration cases from three districts in California. Habeas corpus petitions are the fastest-growing category of immigration lawsuits.
Attorneys in Hawai‘i and around the country are increasingly turning to this legal tactic to free clients held in federal detention facilities. More habeas petitions were filed in the first 13 months of the second Trump administration than in the past three presidential administrations combined, according to public records obtained by ProPublica. Federal courts in California, Texas, and Florida have been particularly impacted: the Eastern District of California, for instance, has received nearly 3,700 habeas petitions since last January. That district had already been declared a “judicial emergency,” and the influx of immigration cases has made the situation dire.
“It has taken its toll on all of our judges,” said Troy Nunley, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. “We were getting these cases at all hours of the night.”
Nunley said his district’s judges and their staff worked late into the night to address the petitions as soon as they were filed, all while juggling the criminal and civil cases the courts normally oversee.
To deal with the onslaught of habeas petitions, Nunley reached out to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which sent notices to judges in nine states, including Hawai‘i. Judges in San Francisco, Washington state, and Hawai‘i answered the call for help. Compared to Nunley’s district, these courts have not been as hard-hit by habeas cases. As of March, more than 50 immigrants were being held at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center. And since last January, 16 immigrants have filed habeas petitions in Hawai‘i arguing that the government had unlawfully detained them.
“It makes sense that some cases be assigned to a judge in Hawai‘i where I’m sure the enforcement actions are not as intensive as it is, for example, in California,” said Ghazialam, the immigration attorney.
ACLU of Hawai‘i Immigrants’ Rights Attorney Leilani Stacy said it’s not unheard of for judges in one federal district to take on cases from another overloaded district.
“It is usually representative of the fact that there's a huge increase in workload and something that the district isn't equipped to handle on its own,” Stacy said. “The Eastern District of California just really seems to be overwhelmed with this number of habeas petitions, and that's why judges in Hawai‘i are being asked to step up and help their colleagues.”
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement to HPR, in part, that “it should come as no surprise that more habeas petitions are being filed by illegal aliens — especially after many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people's mandate.”
Nunley said that having to ask for help from judges in Hawai‘i and other districts speaks to a structural problem and an ongoing need for judges across the country. The fact that federal judges from across the Pacific Ocean have taken on cases in California is an example of judges banding together as a community to tackle a crisis, he added.
“ I really appreciate the fact that judges from Hawai‘i are reaching out to help us,” Nunley said. “ It is really a tsunami here, for want of a better term, because we're already a distressed district.”
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