Hundreds of judges around the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Donald Trump’s administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, a Reuters review of court records found. The decisions amount to a sweeping legal rebuke of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Yet the administration has continued jailing people indefinitely even after courts ruled the policy was illegal. "It is appalling that the Government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written," U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston of West Virginia, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote last week, ordering the release of a Venezuelan detainee in the state. Most of the rulings center on the Trump administration’s departure from a nearly three-decade-old interpretation of federal law that immigrants already living in the United States could be released on bond while they pursue their cases in immigration court. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration is "working to lawfully deliver on President Trump’s mandate to enforce federal immigration law." SOARING NUMBER OF IMMIGRANT DETAINEES Under Trump, the number of people in ICE detention reached about 68,000 this month, up about 75% from when Trump took office last year. A conservative appeals court in New Orleans last week gave the Trump administration a victory in its drive to lock up more immigrants. Just because prior administrations did not fully utilize the law to detain people “does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones wrote in a decision reversing rulings that led to the release of two Mexican men. Both remain free, their lawyer said. Other appeals courts are set to take up the issue in the coming weeks. Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said the increase in lawsuits came as "no surprise" -  "especially after many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people's mandate for mass deportations." The department did not respond to more specific questions about the cases and data findings in this story. With few other legal paths to freedom, immigrant detainees have filed more than 20,200 federal lawsuits demanding their release since Trump took office, a Reuters review of court dockets found, underscoring the sweeping impact of Trump's policy change. In at least 4,421 cases, more than 400 federal judges ruled since the beginning of October that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding people illegally as it carries out its mass-deportation campaign, Reuters found. Other cases are pending, have been dismissed because the detainee was released, or were transferred to another judicial district, which would force immigrants to file a new case. Reuters was unable to determine how many cases were moved or re-filed. Joseph Thomas, an 18-year-old high school student from Venezuela, was arrested during a traffic stop in Wisconsin in late December, while riding with his father, Elias Thomas, on his Walmart delivery route. The men are asylum seekers who entered the United States in August 2023. Both are authorized to work, their lawyer, Carrie Peltier, said. Peltier said they were stopped for “driving while brown.” Within a month, judges ordered the release of father and son. Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz - also a Bush appointee -  ruled that Joseph had been detained illegally and ordered his immediate release. In his ruling, he said Joseph was not subject to mandatory detention, and called out a “lack of any evidence that ICE had a warrant when it detained Joseph while he was a passenger in his father’s car.” U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud, a Trump appointee, ruled that Joseph’s father Elias was eligible for a bond hearing. “This raises an issue of statutory interpretation that courts in this District have repeatedly considered and rejected, and it will be rejected here as well,” Tostrud wrote in his order. Joseph is now taking classes online, afraid to return to school. LANDSLIDE OF LAWSUITS Habeas corpus - Latin for “you shall have the body” - emerged in the English courts in the 1300s and is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It provides a legal recourse for people the government has detained unlawfully. Reuters counted habeas lawsuits by gathering the dockets of every publicly filed federal court case over more than two decades from Westlaw, a legal research tool that is a division of Thomson Reuters. The records, combined with other court filings, offer the most comprehensive view to date of the scale of lawsuits moving through the U.S. justice system and of the defeats for the administration. Within the span of a few days in January, lawyers filed habeas petitions for Liam Conejo, a five-year-old Ecuadorean boy detained in the driveway of his Minnesota home; a Ukrainian man with a valid temporary humanitarian status who was detained on his way to work as a cable technician; a Salvadoran man married to a U.S. citizen and father of a 3-year-old autistic child who is also a U.S. citizen; an Eritrean hospital worker with refugee status who was arrested after letting agents into his apartment complex and a Venezuelan man who was arrested after dropping off his daughter at school. None had criminal records. DIVERTED LAWYERS, VIOLATED ORDERS The rush of lawsuits is forcing the U.S. Justice Department offices to divert attorneys who would normally prosecute criminal cases to respond to habeas cases. Using court dockets, Reuters found more than 700 Justice Department attorneys representing the government in immigration cases. Five of the attorneys each appeared on the dockets of more than 1,000 habeas cases. Partly as a result of that legal logjam, judges have found that the government has left people locked up even after judges ordered their release. In a court order issued last month in Minnesota, Schiltz said the government had violated 96 orders in 76 cases. The U.S. Attorney there, Daniel Rosen, said in a filing two days later that the cases had created an "enormous burden" for government attorneys. Similarly, U.S. District Judge Nusrat Choudhury, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden in New York, wrote this month that ICE violated two "clear and unambiguous orders" by flying a man to New Mexico for detention while falsely claiming he was in New Jersey and could be brought to a court hearing. A Justice Department spokesperson, Natalie Baldassarre, said the administration "is complying with court orders and fully enforcing federal immigration law." "If rogue judges followed the law in adjudicating cases and respected the government’s obligation to properly prepare cases, there wouldn’t be an ‘overwhelming’ habeas caseload or concern over DHS following orders," she said. LEGAL HURDLES In New York, advocates have waited outside immigration court to connect detained immigrants with lawyers who can file same-day habeas claims - blocking their rapid transfer to a detention center in another state. On January 16, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken issued an emergency ruling for an Ecuadorean man who was detained at his court hearing, barring the government from moving him out of New York. On January 30, U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter, who like Oetken was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, ordered his immediate release. Still, many immigrants aren’t able to seek that relief. Some aren’t aware that they can file a habeas case. Others can’t find affordable lawyers. Judy Rall, the U.S. citizen wife of a Venezuelan detainee who has spent almost a year at the Bluebonnet detention center in Texas, said she was quoted upwards of $5,000 to file a habeas petition, which she could not afford. She and her husband have a pending immigration case based on their marriage, but the government has declined to release him while the case is being adjudicated. He has no criminal record, but the government has alleged, without providing evidence, that he has links to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. This month, her lawyer offered to take on the habeas case for free. "Our home burnt down, and I had told them I needed him to come help," she said. "I assume that is the reason."

Recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings allowing starkly partisan voting maps to be used in the November midterm elections crucial to Donald Trump's presidency highlight how a 2019 decision by the justices helped supercharge a political practice that polling shows most Americans oppose. The ruling by the justices in a 2019 case called Rucho v. Common Cause stripped federal courts of their power to police a practice known as partisan gerrymandering. It involves states redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts based on the partisan leanings of voters to boost a political party's candidates. The Rucho decision, according to legal experts, set the stage for the current gerrymandering arms race that began with Texas and California, whose skewed maps were preserved by the Supreme Court. It has since unfolded around the country ahead of the midterms in which Trump's fellow Republicans are fighting to retain control of both chambers of Congress. TEXAS AND CALIFORNIA MAPS The Texas legislature, at Trump's urging, drew a new map of the state's U.S. House of Representatives districts last year that aims to flip up to five currently Democratic-held seats to Republicans. That led California's legislature to redraw its voting map, aiming to flip up to five Republican-held seats to the Democrats. Those two states are the most populous in the country and, thus, have the most House seats. Heavily skewed maps also have been pursued this election cycle by Democrats in Virginia, Maryland and New York, and by Republicans in Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. "Rucho absolutely paved the way for the current gerrymandering-fest around the country," said Harvard Law School professor Nick Stephanopoulos, a critic of the court's 2019 ruling that was decided with five conservative justices in the majority and four liberal justices dissenting. "If there were a consistent, enforceable federal limit on gerrymandering, we'd see much less - maybe close to none - of this activity," Stephanopoulos said. The court in Rucho said partisan gerrymandering is not reviewable by federal courts. Mapmaking driven primarily by race, such as voting maps intended to reduce the power of Black voters, remains illegal under Supreme Court precedent, though the justices recently made it harder to prove such claims. Republicans hold a narrow 218-214 House majority, raising the stakes for every seat in the midterms. Ceding control of either the House or Senate to the Democrats would imperil Trump's legislative agenda and open the door to Democratic-led congressional investigations targeting him and his administration. It remains to be seen whether Democrats or Republicans will prevail in the tit-for-tat fight to design a more favorable electoral landscape for their party. But public polling already suggests a clear loser: U.S. democracy. The practice of redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts is called redistricting. In an October Reuters/Ipsos poll, 61% of Americans, including 75% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans, agreed with a statement that recent redistricting plans, such as those by Texas and California, were "bad for democracy." "Voters fervently hate this," said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University in California and former White House adviser on democracy and voting rights under Democratic former President Joe Biden. "And they're right to hate it." 'POLITICIANS CHOOSING THEIR VOTERS' Although partisan gerrymandering is not new, the timing of the current battle is. Redistricting typically is carried out after the once-per-decade national census, when states are required by law to redraw districts to account for population shifts. The kind of mid-decade mapmaking happening now - not tied to a census tally - has been extremely rare since the 1960s, when the Supreme Court ruled in several major redistricting cases, University of Kentucky law professor Joshua Douglas said. "This is unprecedented in the modern era," Douglas said. The Rucho decision, Douglas added, has combined with partisan politics to produce "this race to the bottom that we're seeing today." "It's the old adage of the politicians choosing their voters, instead of the other way around," Douglas said. Stephanopoulos said, "I think extreme gerrymandering is the most anti-democratic practice in modern American politics. Fundamentally, it yields legislatures - which then enact policies - that don't reflect what the people want." Supporters of the Rucho decision hailed the justices for keeping federal courts from being thrust into the highly politicized role of picking winners and losers in redistricting fights. In most states, the legislature controls redistricting. Technological advancements over recent decades have enabled mapmakers to more precisely configure congressional districts for partisan advantage. "Gerrymandering became sort of a 'scientific' thing in the 1990s, when it could be done using computer software that enabled mappers to sort voters down to the census block level," said elections analyst J. Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. Coleman added, "I think the Supreme Court taking such a 'hands-off' approach has given partisan mappers, on both sides, even more of a mentality of 'if we can get away with pushing the envelope, why not try it?'" In the years before Rucho, federal courts struck down egregious partisan gerrymanders as so politically biased that they violated rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. In the Rucho decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the court was not condoning excessive gerrymandering, which can yield election results that "seem unjust" and are "incompatible with democratic principles." Still, partisan gerrymandering is an inherently political act reserved for legislatures, not courts, whose review would appear political, Roberts said. The ruling did not apply to state courts. But while some state courts have struck down gerrymanders since Rucho, "many more state courts haven't lifted a finger," Stephanopoulos said. 'PARTISAN ADVANTAGE PURE AND SIMPLE' The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the pro-Republican Texas voting map in December and the pro-Democratic redistricting plan in California this month. In those decisions, partisanship and race were deeply intertwined. Both rulings came in cases in which challengers accused the states of using race illegally in redrawing House districts. Texas and California, in response, cited partisan motives, not racial ones. "Overwhelming evidence shows that each of California's new districts was motivated by partisanship, not race," lawyers for California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, told the justices in court papers defending the state's map. Black and Latino voters have supported Democratic candidates at significantly higher rates than Republican candidates in U.S. elections.

The Trump administration's repeal of an Obama-era scientific finding that greenhouse gases pose a public health threat could open up a new pathway for filing lawsuits against power-plant operators and other companies. Legal experts said the policy reversal could lead to a surge in lawsuits known as "public nuisance" actions, a pathway that had been blocked following a 2011 Supreme Court ruling that regulation of greenhouse gas emissions should be left in the hands of the Environmental Protection Agency instead of the courts. Now that the EPA has abandoned that regulatory effort, the legal shield created by the 2011 decision will likely unravel, legal experts said. "This may be another classic case where overreach by the Trump administration comes back to bite it," said Robert Percival, a University of Maryland environmental law professor. The Environmental Protection Agency on Feb. 12 repealed a 2009 scientific determination known as the endangerment finding, which has been the foundation for federal climate regulations. The endangerment finding is what led the EPA to take action under the Clean Air Act of 1963 to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and four other heat-trapping air pollutants from vehicles, power plants and other industries. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has called the rescission of the endangerment finding "the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States." Power companies have generally favored President Donald Trump's deregulatory agenda, but have expressed concern about the repeal of the endangerment finding triggering a wave of lawsuits. The Edison Electric Institute, which represents publicly traded electric utilities, said in September that rescinding the endangerment finding comes with the "potential for increased litigation alleging common-law claims, regardless of the merits of those suits." 'NEW FRONT' OPENING U.S. courts have long recognized a legal theory known as "public nuisance," which prohibits activities that unreasonably interfere with the health and safety of a community. Public nuisance lawsuits are typically brought by state and local governments, and seek to make the party responsible for the nuisance pay to abate, or fix, the condition. The cases are hard to win, in part because of difficulties in proving direct causation between a specific defendant's emissions and particular climate harms. But legal experts have said they are one potential tool for environmental activists to hold greenhouse gas emitters liable for climate harms. In a 2004 lawsuit, California and five other states alleged that big power companies had created a public nuisance by contributing to climate change. The defendants included American Electric Power and Xcel Energy. The case eventually ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against the six states in a unanimous 2011 decision. Writing for the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said regulating greenhouse gases should be left to EPA under the Clean Air Act. That law and subsequent EPA actions like the endangerment finding, Ginsburg wrote, "displace the claims the plaintiffs seek to pursue." That 2011 decision allowed power companies to escape public nuisance lawsuits filed in federal courts, though some cases brought in state court have survived. The policy reversal could give public nuisance cases a new lease on life, legal experts said. "This has the potential to change the stakes of the game," said University of Pennsylvania law professor Sarah Light. "If the Clean Air Act no longer applies to greenhouse gas emissions, then there's no comprehensive statutory scheme in which Congress intended to displace nuisance claims, so they would likely be able to proceed in court." Jenner & Block environmental lawyer Meghan Greenfield agreed that a "new front" for lawsuits may be opening up. "This is an area where things had been settled for the past 15 years, and, especially as the EPA steps out of this space for regulation, you can imagine others wanting to push those fronts ever harder," Greenfield said.