Lal Legal PLC

10/14/2026

🗳️ Your right to vote shouldn’t come with a paperwork obstacle course. 🚧📄

California’s Prop 39 sells more voting barriers as “election integrity.” I’m not buying it. 🙅🏽‍♀️ Billionaire money and Trump-style fearmongering shouldn’t write California’s voting rules. 💸🚩

I unpack the money, the myths, and who pays the price in my latest post. 👇🏽

❌ NO on 39. Protect voters—not the scare campaign. 🏳️‍⚧️✊🏽

An eligible citizen can submit a genuine ballot and still lose their vote because of a paperwork error. That is the central problem with California’s Proposition 39. It would make additional govern…

09/22/2026

As if there is enough time in the day to sue over every new due process problem in immigration detention, ICE has now quietly stopped showing the locations of many detained people with final removal orders in its Online Detainee Locator System. The change reportedly took effect on September 15. We are now finding that people simply disappear from the locator, and officers have also been instructed not to provide some location information by phone.

This is not some minor administrative inconvenience. A person with a final removal order may still have a motion to reopen, a petition for review and stay request, withholding or CAT protections, a third-country removal challenge, a habeas claim, or an existing court order preventing removal.

And for federal habeas litigation in particular, where someone is being detained can determine where the case must be filed and who the proper custodian is.

So yes, apparently in addition to litigating unlawful detention, warrantless arrests, transfers across the country, rushed removals, and violations of court orders, immigration lawyers may now also have to litigate the government’s decision to make detained people harder to find.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/21/ice-hides-detainee-locations

09/16/2026

In other nefarious news, the DOJ has been asking courts to put successful immigration habeas attorneys’ EAJA fee applications on hold while the Supreme Court considers the matter in Montoya Palacios.

Our local courts are mostly saying no, and with good reason. We're sharing some nuggets with you today.

Chief Judge Troy Nunley of the Eastern District of California put the stakes plainly:

“Such a failure to compensate attorneys may have a chilling effect on representation for habeas petitioners at a time when this District is experiencing an unprecedented volume of meritorious habeas cases and many petitioners require aid of counsel.”

Veronica V.O. v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-01796-TLN-JDP (E.D. Cal. Aug. 31, 2026)

He added that the orderly course of justice” favors “swift justice to Petitioner and counsel.”

Other courts have reached the same conclusion, recognizing that delaying EAJA compensation for a year or more can "interfere with Petitioner’s continued access to counsel.” Oliveros v. Kaiser*, No. 25-cv-07117-BLF (N.D. Cal. Aug. 11, 2026).

That matters. Emergency immigration habeas cases require attorneys to do substantial work immediately, often within hours or days, with no guarantee we will ever be paid.

The Equal Access to Justice Act, or EAJA, allows prevailing parties in certain cases against the federal government to recover attorney’s fees when the government’s position was not substantially justified. The point is to make it possible for everyone, regardless of income or status, to obtain competent counsel to challenge unlawful government action without having to pay enormous legal fees out of pocket.

Delaying those fee awards for a year or more shifts the cost of unlawful detention litigation onto the lawyers and organizations doing the work. Courts are recognizing that this can directly affect whether counsel remain available for the next person who needs emergency habeas relief.

Successful habeas litigation should not require civil-rights lawyers to finance the government’s litigation indefinitely.

09/15/2026

🔥 **HABEAS WIN — C.D. CAL.** 🔥

Another federal court victory against ICE overreach.

Our client was released from Adelanto after posting a **$25,000 bond set by the Immigration Judge**. But instead of simply honoring the IJ’s release order, ICE decided to impose a GPS ankle monitor on her anyway.

We challenged it. Today, the federal court agreed that ICE could not unilaterally impose that additional restraint without due process.

The Court held that GPS monitoring is sufficiently restrictive to constitute “custody” for habeas purposes and that the law require a hearing before ICE can impose that kind of location monitoring.

And then the Court ordered: "Respondents [must] remove Petitioner’s ankle bracelet immediately.”

Even better: ICE is now ENJOINED from imposing another ankle monitor or other monitoring restriction unless our client first receives notice and a hearing to determine whether a material change in circumstances actually warrants it.

Sometimes you file the habeas.
Sometimes you keep litigating after release.
And sometimes the ankle bracelet comes off.

09/12/2026

After months in ICE detention, the Eastern District of California ordered our client released immediately.

She had active DACA when ICE detained her and then her detention directly caused the deferred action to lapse. They placed her in removal proceedings!

The Court held that DACA gave her a “significant private interest in remaining at liberty,” that the risk of wrongful deprivation of her liberty was high, and that the government’s interest in detaining her without a hearing was low.

The Court also rejected the idea that the government could cure this months later with a post-detention bond hearing.

We are overjoyed that she is finally going home.

We are also furious that it took months of detention, federal litigation, and a court order to get here.

A person with active DACA should not have had to spend months behind bars without a bond hearing while the government ignored the liberty interest it had already recognized.

Today, she is free. That matters enormously.

But so does what happened to her.

People belong with their families and communities, not locked away without due process.

09/11/2026

HABEAS WIN — CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

Case No. 5:26-cv-04787-BFM

We obtained an order granting habeas relief and requiring our client’s immediate release from ICE detention.

The Court’s language is remarkable:

“For utter lack of compliance with § 1226(a), Petitioner’s detention was unlawful.”

The Court emphasized that this was not just a technical statutory problem:

“Because it’s important to the discussion of the appropriate remedy, the Court notes that this is not just a statutory violation, but a violation with constitutional dimensions.”

And because the detention was unlawful from the beginning, the remedy was release:

“Because Petitioner’s detention has been unlawful from the outset, the Court concludes that the most appropriate remedy for this violation would be to return Petitioner to the previous status quo by releasing him from detention.”

The Court also made clear why a later bond hearing did not cure what happened at the outset:

“In the absence of an initial custody determination, which establishes a lawful basis for detention in the first instance, a subsequent bond hearing is no substitute for the requirement that ICE engage in a deliberative process prior to, or contemporaneous with, the initial decision to strip Petitioner of his freedom.”

The order situates this case within a much broader problem:

“Hundreds, if not thousands of individuals were held without process that was owed to them. Petitioner was one such person.”

And then there is this line, after noting that the government failed to respond to several of the claims actually raised:

“The Court is not duty-bound to go find a reason for them.”

The Petition was granted, and the Court ordered immediate release on reasonable conditions.

This is why habeas matters. The government cannot arrest first, ignore the process Congress required, and then treat a belated hearing as though it erases an unlawful detention from its inception.

09/03/2026

Sometimes it’s the small wins. ⚖️🔥

ICE tried an early-morning transfer the day before our client’s bond hearing, which would have moved her away from her counsel, her family, and the court where she was preparing to fight for her freedom.

We intervened. The transfer was stopped.

And yes, ICE has assured us they will take the matter “very delicate.” 😂

Our client gets to stay put for her bond hearing tomorrow. Sometimes zealous advocacy means a major federal court victory. Sometimes it means catching a transfer before the bus leaves.

We’ll take the win. 💪🏽

ImmigrantRights ICE FederalLitigation DueProcess DeportationDefense LalLegal SmallWinsMatter KeepFamiliesTogether

08/27/2026

Today we were in federal court in Magana Baez v. USCIS, a putative class action with 22 individuals from over 7 different states challenging an unwritten shift in USCIS adjudicatory practice affecting trafficking survivors.

The basic issue is simple: Trafficking survivors received DOJ case-closure letters and relied on them to file early for adjustment of status, and then years later USCIS began treating those letters as insufficient because they did not contain newly preferred wording such as "complete."

No published rule. No advance notice. And the applicants do not even control these letters — DOJ does.

So one of the questions we are raising today: When the government changes the evidentiary rules after people have already relied on the government’s own documents, where is the fair notice and meaningful opportunity to cure?

Much of this litigation is being done pro bono because systemic immigration practices often require systemic challenges.

Sometimes winning one green card is not enough if the same problem remains for everyone else.

Also many thanks to the Magana Zepeda family for helping to continue the fight! Biancoverde Mac

08/26/2026

Trump’s racist visa freeze may be coming to an end.

In January, the Trump regime put an indefinite pause on visa processing for 75 countries, including Pakistan, Thailand, and 12 other Asian and Pacific Islander nations.

For seven months, immigrants approved for lawful immigration to the U.S. were blocked from receiving their visas. This cruel policy separated families, prevented approved workers from arriving, and worsened already severe visa backlogs.

This ruling is a step in the right direction, but the fight continues to restore full visa access for our communities. Trump’s travel ban on 39 countries — including Laos, Afghanistan, and several other Asian nations — remains in place, as his administration works to find cruel new ways to keep people of color from living and working in America.

08/25/2026

🚨 PRO BONO HABEAS VICTORY 🚨

A young person was sitting in ICE detention for ELEVEN months with SIJS and deferred action, I kid you not.

Another immigration lawyer reached out for help with an emergency habeas case in the Eastern District of California.

We helped **pro bono**

No fee. No flat fee. No client bill.

We helped with strategy, emergency briefing, TRO procedure, and filing, and getting the case in front of the court fast.

⚖️ **The federal court ordered immediate release.**

That is the work.

Not every case is profitable. Not every hour is billable. Some work is done because someone is detained, the government is wrong, and you know how to help.

💥 **Client released.**
💥 **Liberty restored.**
💥 **$0 charged.**

And yes, we are going to celebrate victories like this.

Because in this system, freedom is worth celebrating.