Judge Matthew Morrissey fired off their names one by one over the course of an hour.
Castro, Leiva, Galicia, Durán, Cucul, Oporta, Pérez, Sierra.
Appearing in colored jumpsuits on a screen in Morrissey’s courtroom, the men come from different places across Latin America and sit in different jails across Nebraska and Iowa. But they have something in common: They’re all facing deportation.
A year ago, Morrissey managed the Omaha Immigration Court’s detained cases almost all by himself. But as President Donald Trump’s administration pursues mass deportation goals, the jail docket — more than 300 names long in August — has grown far beyond what one judge can handle, further straining one of the nation’s most backlogged courts.
Nebraska immigration lawyers say the surge in detained cases and new restrictions on posting bond mean their clients are waiting longer behind bars — sometimes more than two months. As cases from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s newly converted lockup in McCook flow to the court, they worry the wait times will grow even longer.
The consequence of prolonged jail time, the attorneys say, is that many immigrants who have led crime-free lives in the U.S. are abandoning their legal cases and accepting deportation. That’s exactly what the White House wants, they say.
“I think they are violating due process (and) coercing people to give up their rights,” said Omaha attorney Jason Finch.
ICE spokeswoman Tanya Román said the idea that the administration is detaining immigrants to unjustly coax them into deportation is “a ridiculous accusation” from attorneys “who should know the law and the need to enforce it.”
The agency encourages undocumented people to self-deport and preserve a chance to “come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live (the) American dream,” Román said.
“If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return,” she said in an email.
A spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, said the agency since January has taken measures to restore its integrity and rescinded old policies that “were unfounded in law or discouraged the timely completion of cases.”
Reducing the immigration court backlog is one of EOIR’s highest priorities, said agency spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly, who declined to make Omaha’s judges available for interviews.
Holding pattern
The Omaha court, responsible for deciding Nebraska and Iowa cases, has labored under the weight of a heavy backlog since well before Trump’s return to office.
The average case in the court has been pending for nearly 1,000 days, the longest wait time in the country except for a court in the tiny island territory of Saipan, according to TRAC, an immigration records database.
But detained cases must move faster than that, requiring an all-hands-on-deck approach from the court’s three main judges. Recently, each has been taking on initial hearings for more than 20 jailed immigrants a week in addition to other cases.
There are two main reasons detained dockets have ballooned in Omaha and across the country: more immigrants are getting arrested, and fewer are being released on bond, said Syracuse University immigration researcher Austin Kocher.
Earlier this year, the Trump White House set a quota of 3,000 immigration arrests per day, significantly escalating the arrest rate under former President Joe Biden.
The higher quota came with a reordering of the Department of Homeland Security’s priorities, Kocher said. During Biden’s tenure, ICE detentions in non-border states like Nebraska more narrowly targeted undocumented immigrants with criminal records. But in September, immigrants without criminal convictions made up more than a third of those held by the agency nationally.
While observing Omaha court this month, the Flatwater Free Press saw initial hearings for immigrants across the criminal spectrum: Some had sexual assault convictions or drunken driving charges, while others had minor traffic violations or no criminal histories.
Omaha attorney Dan Reeker said he has more detained clients without rap sheets than at any point in his 15 years of practice. ICE under Trump is picking up more undocumented immigrants encountered while serving warrants on other suspects.
“There’s a lot of people being detained who are essentially in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Reeker said.
Earlier this year, a decision from the nation’s highest immigration court ruled that judges can no longer grant bond to most immigrants who crossed into the U.S. illegally. That means immigrants who previously may have been released from custody while their cases are pending now wait in jail until a judge decides whether to deport them.
In response to the rise in arrests this year, the Center for Immigration Refugee Advancement in Omaha created a hotline for detained immigrants to help them get bond, but more than 90% of the people calling now are not eligible for bond, said the law firm’s legal director, Roxana Cortes-Mills.
Judges under pressure
Despite the massive case backlog, Omaha’s immigration judges are expected to rule on cases in tight timeframes.
New EOIR “performance metrics” state that courts should complete 95% of detained removal cases within 60 days and 95% of non-detained removal cases within one year. That’s a tall order given that the average non-detained case in Omaha has been pending for nearly three years, according to TRAC data.
Some Omaha attorneys say they recently have observed judges moving at a rushed pace in hearings, while others say they haven’t noticed a difference.
Either way, lawyers know the judges are feeling pressure, especially with the Trump administration firing dozens of immigration judges this year, said Omaha attorney Jason Finch.
“Even without them telling us that, we know they’re under that kind of scrutiny,” Finch said.
The changes have translated into longer wait times for everyone on the court’s docket, immigration lawyers told Flatwater.
Finch said he recently had a hearing for a non-detained client bumped back to 2029. The lag in those cases generally allows people to stay and work longer in the U.S, but it could also hurt their asylum claims if the threat they fled in their home country subsides, the Omaha attorney said.
Jailed immigrants used to wait about a month before a final hearing at the Omaha court, but now it’s often taking two months or more, Finch said. The longer people sit in jail, he said, the more likely they are to lose jobs, putting their families in hard financial situations.
Finch has increasingly found himself giving “pep talks” to detained clients thinking of giving up on their asylum cases and submitting to deportation.
They face long odds in court — 85% of the detained cases decided by Omaha judges in August ended in a deportation order, per TRAC. But waiting for a ruling is their only chance to stay in the U.S., Finch said.
Ultimately, keeping immigrants behind bars for long spells until they give up serves the Trump administration’s deportation goals, Reeker said.
“Using detention as a way to attempt to influence the decisions of the person detained has always seemed fundamentally unfair to me,” Reeker said.
From Muscatine to McCook
As ICE ramps up arrests, the agency has leaned on a dozen county jails in Nebraska and Iowa to house the immigrants it hopes to deport.
Most of the jails that have signed up to take ICE inmates are in or near regional hubs, such as Des Moines, Sioux City and Omaha. Some urban counties, including Douglas County, have resisted holding ICE inmates.
| Jail name | City | State |
| Cass County Jail | Plattsmouth | NE |
| Dakota County Jail | Dakota City | NE |
| Hall County Department Of Corrections | Grand Island | NE |
| Hardin County Jail | Eldora | IA |
| Lincoln County Jail | North Platte | NE |
| Linn County Jail | Cedar Rapids | IA |
| Muscatine County Jail | Muscatine | IA |
| Phelps County Jail | Holdrege | NE |
| Polk County Jail | Des Moines | IA |
| Pottawattamie County Jail | Council Bluffs | IA |
| Sarpy County Jail | Papillion | NE |
| Woodbury County Jail | Sioux City | IA |
The recent conversion of the McCook prison camp into an ICE detention center is cheered by supporters of the immigration crackdown, most notably Gov. Jim Pillen, as Nebraska’s contribution to the cause.
Pillen spokeswoman Laura Strimple said the Republican governor stands with a majority of Nebraskans “who appreciate that our great state is doing its part to support President Trump’s historic efforts to get criminal illegal aliens out of our communities.”
That new ICE detention center in southwest Nebraska has immigration advocates worried about a rush of unrepresented inmates flooding Omaha’s detained docket.
Inmates at the new McCook ICE lockup began trickling onto the docket earlier this month, though it’s unclear how many more cases could flow to the court. ICE did not respond to questions about the facility’s impact on the court’s caseload.
On Tuesday, McCook inmates made up at least seven of the 30 cases slated for initial hearings in Judge Abby Meyer’s courtroom, according to ICE records.
Given the remoteness of the facility, those who have attorneys and family members helping with their case are less able to consult with them while preparing for their hearing, Cortes-Mills said.
“It’s a very carefully planned effort right here to increase the chances of people feeling completely isolated” and buckling to deportation, she said.
The cost of detention
Keeping immigrants in detention while they await the Omaha court’s decisions costs the federal government millions of dollars annually.
The Department of Homeland Security pays the State of Nebraska about $2.5 million a month — more than $260 per inmate each day — to use the new McCook facility. The federal agency has also footed $5.9 million in renovations for the facility.
County jails have their own agreements with ICE to house inmates. The Hall County jail in Grand Island receives $105 per inmate a day, but the county is renegotiating its deal with the agency, said jail administrator Todd Bahensky.
Immigration lawyers said they’re skeptical the taxpayer money is being well spent since many of those in jail are not public safety risks.
“I think it is a very expensive proposition … Every dollar you spend detaining folks is a dollar you can’t do other things with,” said Kevin Ruser, who runs the Nebraska College of Law’s Immigration Clinic.
Seven years after coming to the U.S., Brayan Cambara spent his final days in the country locked up in McCook.
Appearing via a video call without a lawyer, Cambara told Immigration Judge Alexandra Larsen in Spanish that he originally overstayed his visa because “they were extorting people in my country.” He told the judge he had no criminal record and no family in the U.S.
Though Cambara was eligible for bond, Larsen ruled that he was a flight risk and denied his release.
About 10 minutes after Cambara’s hearing began, it ended with him accepting a deportation order back to Guatemala.
