When a person is abducted, there's a number to call to report & identify. A habeas petition challenging the abduction is electronically filed in that district, by a lawyer admitted in that district, within 30 minutes of the call. Anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day. Nothing else is good enough.
hello! i am very curious if anybody is building a rapid response network to file habeas shell petitions for nice people before ice can take them out of state?
Does anyone know if something like this is being built already? Those motherfuckers think they can make us litigate all of these cases in the Fifth Circuit. I think they can't. Let's see. Let me step back and explain this a bit. I'm a habeas expert. A habeas petition can only be filed in the federal district where the petitioner is at the moment of filing. So if you live in Philly, get abducted in Philly, then get whisked immediately to Louisiana before you can file your petition ... ... then Louisiana is the only place your petition can be filed. If you file it somewhere else, then at best it gets tranferred there. That means a Louisiana judge decides your case, with any appeal to the Fifth Circuit, under 5th Circuit law. It doesn't matter if they had a good reason for moving you out of state or not. It doesn't matter if they followed normal procedures or not. All that matter (as I understand the law as it stands) is where you were when your petition was filed. There's a significant lurking issue here about who can file a petition for you. I'm a lawyer, but if I don't represent you, then I can't just go and file a habeas petition on your behalf because I think you'd want me to. I think this issue is solvable using something called a next-friend petition ... but I confess that next-friend practice isn't in my habeas wheelhouse. Anyhow, the stakes of who decides these cases--a federal judge in Philly, Boston, NYC, etc, or one in Louisiana or Texas or wherever ICE chooses to put you--matters a LOT to your odds of winning. Not a little. And if you're doubting that they matter, well, ask yourself why exactly ICE is sprinting the people they abduct across state lines and onto planes south? Why do you think this DOJ pushed for this absurd only-habeas position that Roberts and Kavanaugh just bequeathed us? bsky.app
Right. We can be certain that DOJ will argue that notice doesn't have to happen until they've moved you to whatever US location they want to move you to. And, judging from today's opinion, I'm not optimistic at all that a Scotus majority would require more. So at best it's CA5 habeas.
Yes *of course* it is obscene that such gymnastics are required, that something like this needs to be built from scratch overnight, just for people abducted to be able to challenge that abduction in the court where they live instead of one wherever this madhouse administration picks. Duh. There's a significant thing that us lawyers are mostly forgetting needs saying: the people getting abducted don't have a right to a lawyer. Think of Miranda warnings if you're arrested for a crime, you've got a right to counsel, even if you can't afford one, right? Well, not here. Which is a big part of why Aaron's right here. The scotus majority says everyone gets notice they can file a habeas, but for many that's like as empty as me getting notice that I can buy a learjet to fly home. bsky.app
This is why tonight's decision is an absolute joke. The five justices had the gall to suggest that they were somehow charting a middle ground by holding (in THIS procedural posture?) that people must be given a "reasonable time" to file a habeas lawsuit - AS IF EVERYONE IN DETENTION CAN DO THAT?