cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/49641284

As brush fires swept the Everglades area in western Miami-Dade County last month, the Krome Detention Facility, used by U.S… Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was evacuated. Hundreds of immigrant detainees were put on buses and planes, and temporarily shipped as far as Louisiana and Colorado while the fires burned nearby.

The incident has opened a can of worms in federal court after a federal judge was notified that 47 of those detainees were shipped outside the Southern District of Florida in direct violation of court orders. When Miami-based Judge Michael Moore was alerted to the 47 violations, he ordered a deeper look into how often ICE had violated similar court orders in recent months.

The answer alarmed him, and prompted him to respond with force in a hearing on Thursday morning.

Attorneys at the Department of Justice alerted Moore that an estimated 116 detainees have recently been removed from South Florida in direct violation of court orders, a significant increase from the original 47 number. Some of those violations were never reported to the court until Moore started asking. One court order violation was reported to a federal judge the date before the hearing, weeks after the fact. During the hearing on the rampant violations, a visibly frustrated Moore told attorneys for ICE and the Justice Department that the violations would not stand.

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He noted that some detainees not only had been moved to other states, but some have been “removed from the United States” in direct violation of court orders.

The court orders requiring detainees not to be removed from the Southern District of Florida were habeus corpus petitions — the mechanism that allows detainees to challenge the legality of their detention.

ICE has been routinely denying immigration detainees the bond hearings where they can contest the legality of their detention, a legal stance pro-immigration advocates have been actively fighting.

In May, a federal appeals court judge in Atlanta ordered ICE to provide bond hearings to all immigrant detainees in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. The ruling stemmed from issues that cropped up at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami, a short walk from the federal courthouse where Thursday’s hearing took place.

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Moore and other district judges ordered detainees to stay in South Florida because they were awaiting their bond hearings as a matter of basic due process.

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Moore pointed to a recent case where he ordered a bond hearing for a detainee and the detainee was simply released from custody by ICE, rendering the habeus corpus petition moot.

Some detainees might be released after a bond hearing, while others could stay in immigration custody. But the “crisis” of the compounding backlog would certainly be relieved if he ordered every case to have a bond hearing, Moore mused.

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As a parting gift, Judge Moore had some words of wisdom for ICE and the DOJ about if they continued to try to deny immigrant detainees bond hearing in light of the May order from the federal appeals court. The order was clear, he said, and they should think hard about whether they want to violate the spirit of it, lest they want to escalate things.

“If I had to be on Polymarket I know what side of the bet I’d like to be on,” said Moore.