Angry judge swipes at Trump admin over 'game of detention roulette' and 'masked' ICE agents at immigration hearings

Source: Law & Crime

Aug 14th, 2025, 12:39 pm


The Trump administration on Wednesday received a harsh judicial upbraiding over its policy of sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to detain people in immigration court.

In the underlying case, Carlos Javier Lopez Benitez, a Paraguayan immigrant, alleged he was "violently detained" during such an ICE sweep at an otherwise uneventful immigration hearing in New York City in late July. After being sent to an ICE facility in the Houston metro area, his attorneys filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

Now, in a 31-page amended opinion and order, U.S. District Judge Dale Ho, a Joe Biden appointee, formally granted the petition and closed the case – having previously ordered Lopez Benitez's release and return from Texas in a bench ruling earlier this month.

The court, in no uncertain terms, took the opportunity to question some major edifices of President Donald Trump's renewed and supercharged deportation efforts – and found some of those policies in violation of the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process.

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