Hundreds of people being held by federal immigration officials in a rural Mississippi county have been waiting months for a judge to consider their arguments to be set free while they await the outcome of their immigration cases.
Since June, more than 290 detainees from the privately run Adams County Correctional Center near Natchez have petitioned the federal court to grant them a bond hearing or set them free so they can return to their normal lives.
Their petitions in federal court, known as habeas corpus petitions, have all been assigned to Senior Judge David Bramlette III, the sole judge in the Mississippi federal court’s western division. Since June 2025, a handful of cases have been dismissed or withdrawn following procedural errors, but Bramlette has not ruled on any cases based on the evidence and legal arguments presented to him, court dockets show.
Brandon Riches, an immigration attorney from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, said dozens of habeas petitions that he has filed on behalf of his clients have been fully argued for months but are yet to be decided.
“Every day we are praying, crossing fingers, thinking, ‘OK, maybe next week Mr. Bramlette is going to respond,’” said Katherin Torres from New Jersey, whose husband is detained in Natchez and awaiting a decision on his habeas petition, which was filed in December.
It is unclear why Judge Bramlette has not ruled on the cases; he did not return multiple calls requesting an interview, or respond to questions sent by email.
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has led to an unprecedented spike in arrests by ICE, which in July severely restricted eligibility for bond hearings. Federal courts began to see a surge of habeas corpus petitions as a result, because it is one of the few remaining avenues detainees have to be released from prison-like conditions.
“You’re talking about potentially keeping someone imprisoned illegally or unconstitutionally,” said Rebecca Cassler, a lawyer with the American Immigration Council, a national organization.
The backlog in this one Mississippi court is representative of what has happened in many federal court districts across the nation. Of the more than 34,000 habeas petitions filed since January 2025, fewer than 8,000 have been decided, according to research by Habeas Dockets, a nonprofit promoting transparency that has published a database of dockets collected from courts.
At the Adams County facility, ICE houses more than 2,000 people in a county of about 30,000. Courts in Texas and Louisiana, which house the highest number of ICE detainees in the country, are dealing with similar backlogs, a situation further complicated by a recent ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In February, the 5th Circuit, which handles cases from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, upheld the administration’s mandatory detention policy, as did the 8th Circuit in March. These decisions have made it more difficult for detainees to challenge their detention, some attorneys said.
Cassler said that judges have different interpretations about the scope of the 5th Circuit decision. Some have cited the decision to deny petitions, she said, while others have granted the petitions on constitutional grounds.
“It remains possible, for now, to win release through a habeas petition in those states, but there are headwinds,” Cassler said.
Judges are supposed to prioritize habeas petitions and process them faster than other civil cases, “because someone’s freedom is at stake,” said Jessica Vosburgh, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“Most of the cases we’re seeing on habeas dockets are just sitting there,” said D. Korbin Felder, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. After the petition is filed, the government responds, and the petitioner replies, Felder said, “there’s not necessarily a need for hearing or discovery or a prolonged litigation process.”
Some judges took steps to prevent a backlog of petitions when they began to surge. In Georgia, one federal district judge empowered subordinate judges to grant bond hearings in habeas cases that followed specific factual patterns, allowing the petitions to be decided faster.
“Different courts and different judges understand those obligations differently. Some courts have specific sorts of administrative rules and tools that help them move faster through habeas cases,” Vosburgh said. “That’s just not happening in the Southern District of Mississippi.”
More than six months after habeas petitions began flooding in from ICE detainees in Mississippi, nearly all of the cases remain open.
Waiting for a superior court’s decision in order to decide a habeas case “is just totally inappropriate,” said Vosburgh. “You need to decide it based on the state of the law today. If it gets overturned, it gets overturned, but that’s a concern for another day.”
“Behind every guy inside, there are kids, babies, teenagers, children, wife, mom, business, house, rent, bills,” Katherin Torres, the woman whose husband is detained, said. “People don’t deserve to be stuck.”
