Federal courts free 167+ immigrants ICE detained on false 'third-country' removal claims

A pattern emerging across federal courts shows that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held immigrants in detention for months at a time by asserting that another country would soon agree to receive them. Many of those detained had already won orders from immigration courts withholding their removal because they faced persecution or torture in their home countries. According to a review by Documented NY, federal habeas judges repeatedly found ICE's third-country assertions to be unsupported: since January 1, 2026, courts have issued at least 167 orders freeing such detainees on the ground that the agency had no reasonable prospect of arranging a third-country placement. In a smaller set of roughly 35 cases the government prevailed, mostly because judges concluded the habeas petitions had been filed prematurely rather than because the detentions were justified.

The releases build on a separate, earlier ruling. In February 2026, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of Massachusetts held that the administration's policy of removing people with final orders to third countries -- without notice or a meaningful opportunity to object -- violates federal immigration law and the constitutional guarantee of due process, and ordered the government to provide advance notice before any such removal. The volume of subsequent habeas releases indicates the underlying detention practice continued in the face of that ruling, and reporting indicates ICE has in some instances re-detained individuals on the same third-country theory after courts ordered their release, fueling continued litigation.

The Standing records this as a systemic pattern rather than a single case: unlawful detention of people who hold protective immigration-court orders, a denial of due process in immigration enforcement, the repeated need for habeas courts to compel release, and conduct that -- through re-detention after release orders -- edges from aggressive legal interpretation toward defiance of court orders. The scale, at least 167 court-ordered releases in roughly five months, is what brings the practice into archive scope; it is the volume and repetition, not any one habeas case, that establishes a default agency approach rather than an outlier. Appellate review of Judge Murphy's ruling and the trajectory of the ongoing habeas litigation are the natural next developments to watch.