A backlog of immigration cases across the country is having a ripple effect across the Pacific, as at least two federal judges in Hawaiʻi have now taken on immigration cases originating in California.
This backlog comes amid a meteoric rise of habeas petitions, which require the government to justify its imprisonment of a detainee.
In April, a California judge said that thousands of these petitions were overwhelming his district and requested backup.
According to data from the nonprofit Habeas Dockets, at least 16 habeas petitions have been filed in Hawaiʻi during the second Trump administration — over a dozen of which were filed in the first months of 2026.
To learn more about habeas petitions, HPR spoke with Leilani Stacy, the immigrants' rights attorney at the ACLU of Hawaiʻi. Stacy explained how and why immigrants detained in Hawaiʻi and around the country are relying on them as a legal maneuver to obtain their freedom.
Interview Highlights
On how habeas petitions work
LEILANI STACY: Habeas petition, at its core, is really just a legal challenge or a lawsuit saying my detention, my reason for being locked up, is unlawful, and the reason it's unlawful could be for a number of reasons. It could be for a particular constitutional violation, a violation of federal law, or some other more technical regulatory issues that are going on. I think the best way to think about this is, if you're thinking about, normally, a criminal conviction that happens either in a state or a federal court, there's a jury trial, and the jury says you're guilty. Someone who's in state or federal prison might say, actually, I think there was something wrong with my trial. There was something that was unfair, or, you know, the DNA evidence was messed up and I shouldn't be locked up here. That's the wrong reason. That's the basis of our habeas corpus right. It's a right that we
all have under the Constitution, but it's applying in these circumstances.
On the skyrocketing number of habeas petitions
STACY: We've been seeing that huge skyrocket in the number of cases filed and habeas petitions brought on behalf of immigration clients, because this administration has taken a very novel legal approach — we would argue unlawful, and several district courts have agreed with that position — that anyone who enters the country without inspection, essentially, folks who are undocumented are now all of a sudden, even if they're going through the lawful immigration process, they're now subject to being locked up while they're going through that process. And that's a new position, a new legal theory that no administration has taken before, and that means that thousands more people are subject to being locked up. I like to think of this as being in a huge ship that's starting to sink, and you're bailing people. You're bailing buckets out one by one. I think habeas petitions are sort of the same thing. There's this new policy that has people just underwater. They're all being locked up, and so one by one, attorneys are having to go and get their clients out of jail.
On the impact of habeas petitions nationwide
STACY: And what we've seen from our sister affiliates across the country, as well as ACLU national, is really just this work of bringing individual habeas petitions, not only to get individual clients out, but as a way to challenge these policies. You were talking earlier about how it's difficult for us to file all these individual habeas petitions, but in doing so, we're also challenging the government. Because once we put pressure and start filing, you know, one by one, ten by ten, hundreds by hundreds, it puts pressure on the government that has to respond to each of these petitions as well. It's kind of like throwing sand in the gears of this deportation agenda. We might not be able to stop it, but it is trying to slow it down.
This story aired on The Conversation on April 21, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
