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The Associated Press filed suit Sept. 15 against the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, seeking to strike down a rule that blocks online access to the habeas corpus filings of detained immigrants.
- The targeted rule, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2(c), forces anyone — reporters included — to view those case files only in person, at the courthouse where they were filed.
- Since last October, federal judges nationwide have issued upward of 4,400 separate rulings finding that immigration agents locked people up with no legal basis to do so — in a wave of cases the public rarely gets to see.
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A Judicial Conference advisory committee is set to weigh a fix on Oct. 21, though any formal change could still take years to complete.
A lawsuit built on a stack of hidden filings
The Associated Press asked a Washington, D.C. federal court this week to throw out a decades-old procedural rule that keeps the public from pulling up, online, the court records of immigrants challenging their own detention. The case, The Associated Press v. Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, No. 1:26-cv-03219, arrives at a moment when that hidden paper trail has grown enormous: federal courts nationwide have sided with detained immigrants in upwards of 4,400 rulings dating back to last October, concluding again and again that immigration agents locked people up without legal authority to do so.
A barrier AP says makes timely coverage nearly impossible
Attorneys with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which represents AP in the case, filed the complaint on the wire service's behalf. AP's lawyers argue its journalists have repeatedly tried to track habeas corpus cases given the intense public interest in how the government enforces immigration law and treats people in federal custody — only to run into a procedural wall that slows, and often completely blocks, timely reporting. The result, the suit contends, is that claims of unlawful detention stay far less visible to the public than comparable federal litigation.
What Rule 5.2(c) actually locks away
Rule 5.2(c) strips remote electronic access from case records tied to removal orders, immigration benefits or detention — a category that sweeps in habeas petitions. Under the rule, anyone hoping to read those filings, reporters included, has no remote option: they must show up in person at whichever courthouse handled the case and pull up the file on a public terminal there, generally only while the clerk's office is open.
AP's complaint argues the First Amendment grants a qualified right of access to records that are public by definition, and that they belong on PACER, the federal courts' electronic filing system, just like nearly everything else judges handle. The suit further claims the rule amounts to an unconstitutional, content-based restriction, since it singles out cases by subject — immigration — rather than by any individualized privacy concern. A spokesperson for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the named defendant, declined to comment.
A caseload too large for the public to track
AP's complaint lands against a backdrop of explosive growth in immigration litigation. March alone brought 9,911 new federal immigration-related lawsuits, a record high and a 9.2% jump over February, driven mostly by habeas petitions and naturalization suits, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The Department of Homeland Security has defended the detention surge behind that litigation; spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in February the rise in lawsuits was no surprise, arguing that "activist judges have attempted to thwart" Trump's mass-deportation mandate.
The specific figure AP's complaint cites — more than 20,200 habeas suits filed by detainees since Trump took office — traces back to that same February Reuters analysis; ProPublica's independently maintained tracker, which counts immigration-related habeas filings on a rolling basis, now shows a considerably higher total, underscoring how quickly the caseload has kept growing since.
A quieter campaign that hasn't moved the needle
AP's suit is not the first attempt to unwind the restriction. In May, the Reporters Committee formally petitioned the panel that drafts rule changes for the Judicial Conference — the body that sets policy for the federal court system — asking it to strip the immigration-case language out of Rule 5.2(c).
Months earlier, the group had already written to five district courts' presiding judges, in jurisdictions that include New York and the nation's capital. "It's a real nationwide problem," said Renee Griffin, a Reporters Committee staff attorney now representing AP, of the restriction's practical effect.
The May request went to a Judicial Conference advisory committee, which meets again on Oct. 21. Even a favorable recommendation there would still need public hearings, a comment period and final sign-off from the Judicial Conference and the Supreme Court — a process AP's own complaint acknowledges could stretch on for years.
In the meantime, a handful of judges have granted narrow, case-by-case exceptions; a federal appeals court lifted restrictions in one high-profile immigration case last year after a Reporters Committee motion filed for another news outlet. The organization argues that piecemeal fixes can't substitute for guaranteed public access to a category of cases now numbering in the tens of thousands.
