Nebraska's federal courts consider 'unprecedented' number of wrongful detention lawsuits from immigrants

By Molly Ashford , Nebraska Public Media

March 3, 2026, 6 a.m. ·

Nebraska’s federal courts are considering an unprecedented number of wrongful detention lawsuits from immigration detainees at the McCook Detention Center and county jails across the state.

More than 60 wrongful detention petitions, called petitions for a writ of habeas corpus, have been filed by immigrants detained in Nebraska since last September. In the first two months of this year, 36 cases have been filed.

Some of the petitioners have been represented in court by the ACLU of Nebraska. Molly Ashford spoke with ACLU staff attorney Grant Friedman about the legal issues behind the uptick, and how the increase in cases is straining judicial resources.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Molly Ashford: What exactly is a petition for a writ of habeas corpus?

Grant Friedman: A petition for a writ of habeas corpus is a way to ask the federal government to defend why they are detaining an individual. It originates back from the 13th century, looking at English common law, for essentially the idea that the executive branch of government cannot hold a person without providing a reason – the idea being that being held in violation of the law is the utmost offense to our liberty and due process. For that reason, the writ of habeas corpus is so important that it was put into the United States Constitution and is protected to allow an individual to challenge their detention and to force the government to explain why they are holding someone.

Ashford: Is the number of immigration habeas petitions filed in Nebraska and across the country recently a significant uptick from recent years?

Friedman: Probably in the past year or so, we have seen over – I think the number is 20,000 right now – habeas cases being filed on behalf of immigrant detainees across the country. And that number is just something that our country has never seen before. This is an unprecedented number. And as we've seen through the district of Minnesota, who is getting the largest quantity of [immigration habeas lawsuits], that this truly does strain a judicial court system. Because the writ of habeas is so important, it is intentionally designed – and case law and statutes all emphasize the fact that it is supposed to be adjudicated as swiftly as possible – it does take precedence over other judicial matters.

Ashford: I assume that becomes more difficult when there are so many cases being filed.

Friedman: Yes, it does. Even in Nebraska, where we have our cases going, we are getting to the point where we are waiving hearings. We are getting hearings scheduled earlier in the morning to accommodate these because the court does recognize these things need to be adjudicated.

Ashford: We first saw this uptick in habeas immigration cases in Nebraska after the ICE raid on Glenn Valley foods in Omaha last summer. And those cases were from people who were granted bond by an immigration judge but were not being released. Correct?

Friedman: Yes. So we call those the auto stay cases, where an individual goes before an immigration judge. [These are] individuals that had immigration attorneys who explained these people have no criminal record. They’ve been in the country for 20 years. They have U.S. citizen children and family and loved ones. And so then the immigration judge, doing their job, went through the factors for evaluating bond eligibility and said, “Yeah, this person should be released.”

But then we had the government filing a form – a one page form that required a checkbox and a signature – saying we’re not going to release you on that bond. That all the work you did, the attorney did, the immigration judge did to evaluate whether a person should be released into the community, we’re just going to pause all of that. We specifically had three cases during that period in which the immigration judges were still granting bonds, but the Board of Immigration Appeals was saying that they were [subject to] mandatory detention, and we were able to get clients released on the bonds that they were granted.

Ashford: Now the cases that were filed more recently are from people who were not even granted a bond hearing at all because of the way that mandatory detention has been expanded, and the petitioner is asking a federal judge to essentially force DHS to hold a bond hearing for them.

Friedman: Yeah, I would say that's the majority of the cases that we're looking at here in Nebraska. You have an individual who is detained, you know, 18 months ago, clearly a person that is eligible for a bond hearing. I think this is an important distinction here – we're talking about the ability to have the hearing, not about the outcome of the hearing, because there are factors that the immigration judges look at to determine whether a person should be released on bond. But the government's current position is that immigration judges don't even get to look at those factors. They are being told, “No, you don't have jurisdiction to grant bond.”

So we're going to federal court, and we're saying, “This individual is subject to discretionary detention. They have been under the past 30 years of immigration law, and the statute hasn't changed. The reinterpretation that they are providing is inconsistent with the plain language.” And we are continuing to see the district of Nebraska intervene and say, “No, this person is not subject to mandatory detention. They're entitled to a bond hearing.”

Ashford: From my own review of these cases, it seems like most judges in Nebraska have ruled in favor of the petitioner and granted those bond hearings. Have your clients had any trouble getting a bond hearing after those court rulings?

Friedman: The rulings state that respondents are ordered to provide a bond hearing. I thus far have had two cases come to completion to that point, and I haven't seen an issue with the government providing those bond hearings within the ordered time.

Ashford: For people who have a family member or friend who is in immigration detention without a bond hearing, who should they reach out to?

Friedman: We have set up an email address to kind of be a hub of all of this information, because we know so many folks are having difficulty. That email is [email protected]. That was just, all of us on this legal team, all of us on our staff, were getting emails about family members, concerned individuals, people that just knew us in the community and knew we work at the ACLU. And so we wanted to offer a streamlined point of access to everyone who’s potentially being unlawfully detained. Also, we’re using that email address if there are attorneys that are interested in doing this work with us, we have set up a Nebraska Habeas Pro Bono Project, so individuals who are being unlawfully detained don’t have a financial barrier to getting an attorney to represent them in a habeas action.

Ashford: That was Grant Friedman, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Nebraska. I’m Molly Ashford, Nebraska Public Media News.