This article was republished from our friends over at Court Watch.
asserted
article → republish → Watch
Please consider subscribing to them if you want the early scoop on what's happening in our court system, from the concerning to the bizarre.
asserted
what → consider → bizarre
Hundreds of street arrests that court records show disproportionately targeted Latinos in and around New York City.
asserted
records → show → City
Detainees shuffled across the country one day before a congressional oversight visit.
asserted
Detainees → shuffle → visit
Each of these stories came to light because of habeas corpus — a centuries-old legal writ that has become a powerful tool for freeing immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation campaign.
asserted
that → come → campaign
Because they’re public court filings, habeas corpus petitions also offer a window into the often cryptic world of immigration enforcement.
asserted
petitions → ’re → enforcement
Across the country, the nearly 50,000 habeas corpus petitions filed in recent immigration cases are public records only in theory, because a 2007 court rule makes the petitions impossible to access online like most other federal court records.
asserted
petitions → file → records
The rule has hobbled attorneys, journalists, and researchers trying to gather information about arrests and detention in this unprecedented era of immigration enforcement.
asserted
rule → hobble → enforcement
“The effect is it takes much longer to get access to these records in a particular case and it makes it basically impossible to get records in a lot of these cases at once,” said Renee Griffin, a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
asserted
Griffin → take → Press
“It’s a real nationwide problem,” Griffin said.
asserted
Griffin → ’ → ?
A new project called Habeas Dockets is working to counteract this roadblock with help from volunteers.
asserted
project → call → volunteers
According to the project’s founder, 400 people across the country have contributed court records to the site, which publishes habeas corpus filings online for anyone to read them.
uncertain
anyone → accord → them
Court Watch spoke with founder John Kyle Cronan, a software developer from Chicago with no legal background besides his own curiosity.
asserted
Watch → speak → curiosity
“I’m the kind of person who has a PACER account just to look at stuff sometimes,” Cronan said, referring to the federal court's online document retrieval system.
asserted
Cronan → ’m → system
He first noticed the effect of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2(c) in April 2025, when he tried to access court documents about a group of people the federal government was trying to send to CECOT, a maximum security prison in El Salvador known for its brutal conditions.
asserted
government → notice → conditions
When Cronan tried to open the documents, he ran into the same message that greets anyone who tries to access these records online: “You do not have permission to view this document.
asserted
You → try → document
A court clerk explained to Cronan that he could come in and view these public records in person at a courthouse kiosk.
uncertain
he → explain → kiosk
“You’ve got me there,” Cronan remembers thinking.
asserted
Cronan → get → ?
He decided to organize a volunteer effort to make these court records accessible online.
asserted
records → decide → effort
The project has become Cronan’s full-time job, and he recently started fundraising to grow the site.
asserted
he → become → site
Cronan relies on help from law students, paralegals, and volunteer attorneys to review each filing for sensitive information that should be redacted, even though he’s not legally required to do so.
asserted
he → rely → information
The personal details potentially contained in immigration filings are the reason why there is a limit on electronic access in the first place.
asserted
details → contain → place
The privacy rule recognizes that immigration cases, like social security cases, are particularly likely to contain sensitive information—hence the shielding.
asserted
cases → recognize → information
Immigration matters are usually handled in immigration court, which is separate from the federal court system and does not allow public access to filings.
asserted
which → handle → filings
In some cases, however, a person seeking asylum or other protected status might end up taking their claims to a federal judge, at which point the filings become public records.
uncertain
filings → seek → judge
Those papers could contain highly sensitive information about trafficking or domestic violence victims, said Daniella Prieshoff, senior managing attorney at the Tahirih Justice Center in Baltimore.
uncertain
Prieshoff → contain → Baltimore
Making that information easily accessible online could be dangerous for vulnerable clients, who are fearful of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in addition to their abusers or traffickers.
uncertain
who → make → abusers
“It’s not just ICE, but it’s persecutors, abusers, traffickers,” Prieshoff said.
asserted
Prieshoff → ’ → ?
“Our clients have very realistic concerns that those individuals will be able to find them at all costs, so having that parameter of allowing access to those records, but at a physical location, … I think that sets up a boundary that helps protect survivors.”
asserted
that → have → survivors
The flood of habeas corpus petitions filed under the second Trump administration is somewhat different than typical immigration cases filed in normal times.
asserted
flood → file → times
Usually an obscure area of law, habeas corpus petitions have become an increasingly important way to challenge the legality of an immigrant’s detention as ICE holds more people in facilities that are often ill-equipped to handle them.
asserted
that → become → them
These petitions are often filed hastily in the hours or days after a person has been arrested.
asserted
person → file → hours
They rarely contain the contents of asylum applications or other sensitive information, but lay out the bare bones facts of the petitioner’s detention.
asserted
They → contain → detention
Cronan’s team examines habeas filings before making them available online to ensure that any personal information, such as details about a person’s fear of persecution in their home country, is redacted.
asserted
information → examine → country
Habeas Dockets first launched a year ago and became a nonprofit, operating under the name Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative, earlier this year.
asserted
Dockets → launch → name
“With the return of Trump, I really feel like the issues of immigration enforcement are the worst of all of it,” Cronan said.
asserted
Cronan → feel → it
“I feel really strongly that what they’re doing is wrong and is harming people.”
asserted
doing → feel → people
About 29,000 documents have been uploaded to the site, Cronan said, with help from a group of volunteers that includes students, retirees, working folks with flexible schedules, and attorneys.
asserted
that → upload → schedules
The electronic shielding rule is essentially an artifact of the early days of the internet, and much like PACER itself, it has not kept up with the times.
asserted
it → keep → times
The rule assumes that lawyers will go to the courthouse in person to do legal research on habeas cases, which is no longer the case, Cronan said.
asserted
Cronan → assume → cases
…and 13 more, not listed.
