Detained Immigrants Are Using Habeas Corpus to Escape Medical Neglect

Since November 2025, people have gathered for a weekly vigil outside Otay Mesa Detention Center, where private prison company CoreCivic holds immigrants. Desperate to communicate with the outside world, immigrants trapped there attached notes to lotion bottles and other objects, throwing them over a cement wall and two barbed wire fences so their messages could reach those attending the vigils. In one note, a man wrote, “We are all constantly sick.”

Ms. A.H., an asylum-seeker in her 50s, was once among those detained in Otay Mesa. Thanks to National Immigration Law Center attorneys filing a habeas petition, she is now free. Ms. A.H. came to the United States fleeing decades of violence, sexual assault, and death threats at the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army, a Colombian paramilitary group known as FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo). Once resettled in San Diego, she had access to mental health care and began to recover from the trauma she experienced. Her mental health improved with therapy and medication.

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement disrupted Ms. A.H.’s healing when its agents arrested her at the San Diego Immigration Court while she was attending a routine hearing. As she exited the courtroom, approximately nine ICE officers surrounded her and later transported her to Otay Mesa in shackles. For the entirety of her detention, Ms. A.H. received inadequate mental health care: she never received her usual prescription medication and could no longer attend therapy with her counselor. Instead, the detention center prescribed Ms. A.H. medications that gave her stomach pain and the constant feeling that she was “out of it.” As a result, her mental health symptoms worsened. She had difficulty sleeping, and nightmares and panic attacks multiple times a week.

Medical Neglect is a Systemic — and Deadly — Problem

Ms. A.H. was just one of countless people receiving inadequate medical and mental health care while in ICE detention, a crisis only exacerbated by the drastic increase in immigration detention under the Trump administration. Human Rights Watch documented numerous instances where officers and medical staff refused to provide detained immigrants with their prescribed medications. In one case, a woman with diabetes was hospitalized because an officer failed to provide her insulin.

ICE continues to detain people despite knowing that the immigrants they detain are at a high risk of medical neglect — which ICE itself causes. The limited number of medical providers in ICE detention centers often do not appropriately manage psychiatric medication, if they provide any at all. When people request mental health care or display related symptoms, officers may force them into solitary confinement, sometimes for weeks on end, even though the United Nations has determined that prolonged solitary confinement is torture.

This denial of medical and mental health care is deadly. The ACLU found that inadequate mental health care “has led to a precipitous rise in the rate of deaths by suicide in ICE detention.” The ACLU also found that, between 2017 and 2021, 95 percent of deaths in immigration detention “likely could have been prevented if ICE had provided clinically appropriate medical care.” Thirty-two people died in immigration detention in 2025, the highest number in over two decades. At least 12 of these people died by suicide. This is a particularly dire situation for Black immigrants, who face disproportionate rates of harm and abuse in detention.

ICE also intentionally undercounts the true number of deaths caused by detention; they release some immigrants just before they are likely to die so that their deaths will not be counted as “in custody.”

Why Immigrants are Using Habeas Corpus for Life-or-Death Protection

For many, the only way to escape immigration detention is through habeas corpus. A habeas petition demands that the government prove it has lawful authority to detain someone. If a detained immigrant wins their case, the court will issue a writ of habeas corpus, ordering either release or that the detained person be provided with a bond hearing.

The number of habeas petitions filed since the start of President Trump’s second term has skyrocketed due to the increase in ICE arrests nationwide. In addition, the administration has made legal maneuvers to increase the number of immigrants it can detain, including a new policy that drastically limits detained immigrants’ eligibility for bond. A recent court decision upheld this new bond policy, making it easier for the government to detain immigrants in Texas and Louisiana, the states with the highest and second highest number of detained immigrants respectively.

Why the Need for Habeas Petitions is Growing

While President Trump failed to create a detention system capable of holding over 100,000 people by January 2026, as he had hoped, he succeeded in increasing the number of people held in detention by almost 75 percent between January 2025 and December 2025. Increased detention is closely tied to President Trump’s plan for increased deportations. In November 2025, for every person released from ICE custody, approximately 14 other people in ICE custody were deported, up from a ratio of 1 release per 1.6 deportations about a year earlier.

Although immigrants with medical needs should be treated with human dignity without legal intervention, it is nonetheless a hopeful sign that more lawyers are taking on habeas cases pro bono, and more people are donating to support habeas work.

Still, while some people like Ms. A.H. are free, over 68,000 people are currently trapped in immigration detention throughout the country without adequate medical care, including over 1,400 people at Otay Mesa. In the first three months of 2026, at least 14 people died in immigration detention. If this rate continues, the deaths in immigration detention this year will exceed last year’s record-breaking figure. For as long as immigration detention continues, we can expect more illness, more deaths, and more desperate messages from those on the inside.