Our own Hillary Walsh, founder and CEO of New Frontier Immigration Law, was recently featured in CEO Official Magazine in an article titled “When ICE Can’t Deport You but Won’t Release You.” The feature examines a difficult immigration issue: what happens when the government acknowledges that deportation is not likely to happen soon, but ICE continues to hold a person in custody?
The article highlights Walsh’s work bringing these cases into federal court through habeas corpus litigation, and notes her background handling immigration matters before federal appellate courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and immigration courts.
Removal can become difficult or impossible for several reasons: travel documents may not be available, the receiving country may not cooperate, or conditions may prevent removal from moving forward. When the government recognizes that deportation is not realistically going to happen soon, continued detention can raise serious constitutional concerns.
The CEO Official Magazine feature focuses on the legal limits surrounding prolonged or indefinite immigration detention. Courts have recognized that immigration detention cannot continue without meaningful limits when removal is not reasonably foreseeable.
For people and families facing this situation, the legal question is not simply whether ICE wants to continue detention. The issue is whether the government has a lawful basis to keep holding someone when it cannot carry out deportation within a reasonably foreseeable period.
Habeas corpus is often the legal tool used to challenge continued detention in federal court. In this type of case, a person asks a federal judge to review whether the government can lawfully continue holding them.
The article describes Walsh’s use of habeas corpus litigation when ICE admits it cannot deport someone but still does not release that person. The feature also references a current example involving a client who has remained in ICE custody for months even though ICE has acknowledged that it cannot deport the person.
These cases can involve complicated questions about constitutional protections and federal immigration authority. Our role is to help clients understand those questions and evaluate the legal options available to them.
The magazine feature brings attention to an important issue for people facing prolonged immigration detention: when deportation is not reasonably foreseeable, continued custody may be subject to challenge in federal court.
If you or someone you care about is facing prolonged ICE detention, Hillary Walsh and New Frontier Immigration Law can help you understand your options and whether habeas corpus litigation may apply to the circumstances. Contact our team to discuss the situation and learn what legal paths may be available.
Hillary Walsh is one of America’s foremost immigration attorneys — a nationally recognized advocate whose career has been built case by case, client by client, in the most challenging corners of immigration law.
For over a decade, Hillary has represented immigrants, asylum seekers, trafficking survivors, and families facing deportation in proceedings before the Ninth, Sixth, and Fifth Circuit Courts of Appeals, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and immigration courts across the country. Her legal expertise spans removal defense, asylum, VAWA, T Visa, U Visa, green cards, and naturalization — the full breadth of immigration law, with particular depth in protection-based relief for vulnerable populations.
Her work has reached the highest levels of American jurisprudence. Hillary was invited to author an amicus curiae brief for a U.S. Supreme Court case — a distinction extended to attorneys whose command of immigration law is recognized at the national level.
Hillary founded New Frontier Immigration Law in 2019 with a simple but radical belief: that every person deserves a fighting chance, and that there is a solution for every problem. That legal philosophy has guided thousands of client outcomes across Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and communities nationwide.
She doesn’t just represent clients in immigration court; she shapes how immigration law is argued, understood, and applied.
