US Judge Calls Long ICE Detentions Absent Hearings ‘Shocking’

A Washington federal judge rebuked the Department of Homeland Security for detaining immigrants for a month or longer without bond hearings, calling the practice “shocking” and a “huge whopping statutory violation.”

Senior Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court for the District of Columbia raised concerns about the detention periods during a hearing Wednesday on warrantless immigration arrests in the nation’s capital.

“I found that, to be honest, shocking,” Howell, an Obama appointee, said, after listing examples where arrested immigrants faced prolonged detention. The judge noted that individuals accused of committing crimes get such a hearing sooner than immigrants accused of civil offenses.

She also asked the government’s lawyer, John Bardo of the DC US attorney’s office, if he was concerned about the custody periods “as an officer of the court.”

Still, Howell asked both Bardo and attorneys representing arrested immigrants to consider if she had authority to take up that issue in this case. At one point, she appeared to hint to an attorney for the immigrants that it may be an issue to challenge separately.

If it can’t be reviewed in this matter, she said, “perhaps it could be considered in another case.”

Howell is the latest federal judge to raise concerns about the Trump administration’s detention practices, after DHS changed its interpretation of detention standards to hold nearly all arrested immigrants without bond hearings.

A federal judge in California found last month that the government “far crossed the boundaries of constitutional conduct” with its detention interpretation. The chief judge of the Minnesota federal trial court ordered the acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to appear personally to show why he shouldn’t be held in contempt for repeatedly defying court orders on the release of detained immigrants, before canceling the hearing.

The change has also sparked a flood of habeas petitions by detained immigrants seeking release that have overwhelmed federal prosecutors’ offices.

Warrantless Arrests

Howell made her comments while considering claims by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations that federal immigration agents violated her earlier court order restricting warrantless civil arrests in Washington.

Howell ordered the federal government in December not to arrest anyone in Washington for civil immigration offenses without an administrative warrant unless the government determined, following an individual assessment, that the person was likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained.

Her order stemmed from a lawsuit last year alleging immigration agents were arresting Washington residents perceived to be Latino without warrants or probable cause, following a surge in federal immigration enforcement in the nation’s capital.

However, attorneys for the arrested immigrants claimed last month that agents are continuing to arrest people in Washington without an administrative warrant and without sufficiently considering if they were likely to escape first.

Records produced by the government for 33 warrantless arrests since Howell’s ruling either don’t address an individual’s escape risk, or rely on “boilerplate” and sometimes contradictory evidence, the challengers said in court filings.

The challengers also took issue with ICE guidance on how officers should evaluate a person’s likelihood of escaping, based on whether the person is “unlikely to be located at the scene of the encounter or another clearly identifiable location.”

“This record demonstrates substantial noncompliance,” Aditi Shah, an attorney for the ACLU representing the immigrants, said at the hearing.

Bardo told Howell that the government is “taking steps to implement the court order.”

Howell said at the hearing that some of the individual arrest scenarios presented by the parties were “disturbing, to say the least.” However, she also said that she can’t ignore certain steps the administration did appear to take to implement the order, including by revising forms and instructing officers who don’t fill them out correctly.

The judge also wrestled with her authority to consider the ICE memo without overstepping, given jurisdictional limits on when federal judges can weigh individual immigration challenges. The case is also pending before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Howell said she wanted to avoid impeding that review.

Howell said she would order both sides to submit supplemental briefing on what she described as the “complicated jurisdictional needles we’re threading here.”

“I do try to stay within my lane here,” she said.

The case is Escobar Molina v. DHS, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-03417, hearing held 3/11/26.