Rodney Taylor, a Liberia-born man who is a double amputee and is missing three fingers on one hand has filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court seeking release from Georgia’s Stewart detention center, after being held there by Ice for eight months.
“What is at stake in this case … is one of the most profound individual interests recognized by our legal system: whether Ice may unilaterally take away – without a lawful basis – his physical freedom, ie, his ‘constitutionally protected interest in avoiding physical restraint,’” the petition says.
The action is “a canary in the coal mine for what’s about to happen” nationwide, said Sarah Owings, Taylor’s immigration attorney. “[T]housands of habeas claims are going to be filed across the country,” she said, after a Board of Immigration Appeals decision on 5 September dramatically curtailed the immigration system’s ability to release detainees while awaiting decisions on their status.
This is making immigration attorneys turn to federal district courts, observers told the Guardian.
Taylor’s continued detention despite his extensive medical needs is “yet another stark example of the cruelty of this administration”, said Helen L Parsonage, the attorney who filed the petition.
Brought to the US by his mother on a medical visa when he was a child, Taylor had 16 operations for his medical conditions. Now 46, he has lived in the US nearly his entire life and works as a barber. He got engaged only 10 days before Ice detained him in January – due to a burglary conviction from when he was a teenager and for which the state of Georgia pardoned him in 2010, according to Owings, who shared some of Taylor’s paperwork with the Guardian.
Taylor has a pending application for US residence – commonly known as a “green card” – but has not been released on bond while the federal government determines his immigration status. He says he has been subjected to multiple mishaps in detention, including the screws coming out of his prosthetic legs, causing him to fall and injure his hand; and, during different periods, not being able to charge the batteries in his prosthetic legs or get them calibrated, leading to other injuries.
Concurrently, the Trump administration has dismantled the office for civil rights and civil liberties (CRCL) and the immigration detention ombudsman (Oido) – two federal offices that provided oversight for healthcare and other issues.
Habeas corpus, a legal tool meant to challenge the legal basis for detention, “predates the United States and goes back to the English legal system”, said César García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University. It fundamentally means that a detained person has the right for a judge to rule on whether their detention is unlawful.
Taylor’s petition is important because it comes after the September decision, which “virtually eliminate[d] bond for people no matter how long they’ve lived here and whether they have jobs and contribute to our nation”, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).
“The meaning of this case at this point in time is because it is a direct challenge to this administration’s … recent attempt to expand detention authority,” García Hernández said.
Immigration attorneys nationwide are pursuing the same strategy – but it requires a few steps.
“Most immigration lawyers have never seen the inside of a federal court,” said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta immigration attorney of more than three decades. That’s because immigration courts are a separate system from federal district courts.
This is leading to training sessions for immigration attorneys on filing habeas claims being staged nationwide, so they can try to get tens of thousands of detainees released from detention while their cases are resolved.
Since district courts are separate from immigration courts, immigration attorneys are also having to follow a process of admission into district courts, which then authorizes them to file habeas petitions. In Georgia and some other states, this can include traveling to the district court with jurisdiction over the area where the detention center is located and attending a ceremony.
“We’re having to adapt,” Owings said. “We’re figuring out how to respond.”
Several observers familiar with Taylor’s case said he would never have been detained without bond for eight months during previous administrations, given his medical condition. “This case is an example of what happens when Ice is judge, jury and executioner,” Owings said. “Now, if you’re coming in the door, there’s no going out,” she said.
In the months to come, she added, “There will be more Rodneys. There will be more claims from people treated the same – without medical care, without guardrails to review their situations, without the ability to be released.”
