The migrant from San Diego was released after seven weeks in custody. He spent seven weeks in ICE custody. His case shows the new legal hurdles immigrants face.

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A Turkish immigrant who fled his country after being tortured is now home with his wife in San Diego after being detained for about seven weeks by US authorities.

Idris Demirtas 25, was released only after a federal judge in the Southern District of California issued a writ of habeas corpus, ruling that his detention was unjustified. An immigration judge ruled in favor of Demirtas a week earlier, but submitted the decision to a federal trial.

His arrest at a routine immigration checkpoint and detention for 48 days reflected some of the hardline tactics of law enforcement. by the Trump administration since the Republican took office a year ago and promised to deport up to one million people per year.

“I grew a lot in this process, but we lost a lot emotionally and mentally,” said May Bovenzi, Demirtas’ wife. “I hope our mental health returns to normal. I feel like we’ve been misinformed a lot and I’ve seen firsthand how our constitutional rights are being taken away from us.”

The couple, who married in May, missed their first holiday season because of the ordeal, but now plan to celebrate in their own way, Bovenzi said. She added that she is grateful for all the support her family has received.

“My body didn’t want to sleep last night because I was afraid to dream that I was in prison again,” Demirtas said of his first night home after seven weeks in prison.

Demirtas was arrested Nov. 20 while serving a warrant to appear for a routine search with ICE in San Diego at the Edward Schwartz federal courthouse downtown.

He was one of hundreds of people who were arrested in California last year while appearing at immigration checkpoints or court hearings. His background would make his arrest during the Biden administration unlikely. He is married to a US citizen and has a pending application for permanent residency. He has no criminal record, a lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed during a hearing last week. He comes from a human rights country criticized by the State Department and came to the United States after fleeing religious persecution. He claims in court documents that he was tortured in Turkey because of his religious beliefs.

Despite that record and an immigration judge’s ruling that he could be released on bail on Dec. 30, Demirtas remained held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center until a district judge granted his petition for habeas corpus and he was released Tuesday evening.

Lawyers are increasingly turning to federal courts to secure the release of their clients due to disruptions in the immigration justice system. The Trump administration has fired more than 100 immigration judges across the country, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges.

In California, more than a quarter of federal immigration judges have been fired, retired or resigned since Trump took office in January 2025. In San Francisco, at least 12 immigration judges are fired or were left without clear explanations, exacerbating a backlog of 100,000 cases in the region it covers.

A spokesman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the courts, said the office does not comment on personnel matters.

“Unforgiving System”

In July 2025, the Trump administration issued a directive requiring mandatory detention for nearly all noncitizens who entered the United States without authorization.

“Given how unforgiving the current immigration system is, there are important people who just opt ​​out,” said Matthew Holt, an immigration attorney at Demirtas. “It’s sad to watch it after the generations of sacrifices they’ve made.”

Holt and other lawyers said the new system of holding more people and keeping them out on bail or parole is like a “war of attrition,” a military strategy in which one side wears the other down by depleting its resources and morale.

In September, about 7,079 immigration court cases nationwide ended with voluntary departure, which allows a person to leave the country within a certain period of time and usually carries less severe penalties than a deportation order. This is the highest figure ever recorded in a single month, by data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Center, which contains information on cases dating back to 1997. In California, the total is 408.

“I personally have seen people with valid arguments, or arguments that could be valid, say before the hearing, before their testimony, ‘I want a deportation order. I want to leave. I can’t take it anymore,'” said Jeremiah Johnson, a former San Francisco immigration judge who was fired Nov. 21 in an email without explanation.

Federal judges rule against detention

A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment. Previously, Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Tricia McLaughlin insisted that Demirtas had entered the country illegally.

“To be clear, having an application pending with USCIS or being eligible for a green card does not give anyone legal status,” McLaughlin said of the case.

and The Department of Homeland Security’s 2024 budget document says it costs ICE an average of $217 a day to detain someone in San Diego, meaning U.S. taxpayers paid about $10,416 to have Demirtas detained before the agency finally agreed to release him.

Before President Donald Trump’s second term, federal court cases known as habeas corpus were not regularly used in immigration cases. Habeas corpus is the constitutional right that ensures that people have the opportunity to challenge their imprisonment before a judge.

In 2025 they presented hundreds of habeas corpus cases in the Southern District of California, and thousands of them have appeared in immigration detention across the country. So far in 2026, about a dozen such cases have already been filed in the Southern District of California, according to habeasdockets.org website that tracks this type of request.

Federal judges have consistently rejected Trump’s mandatory detention policy. In one a recent presentation in the Southern District of New York US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan noted that aliens won their habeas corpus petitions in 350 of 362 cases in federal district courts. He wrote that “160 different judges, in approximately 50 different courts scattered throughout the United States,” handed down the sentences.

New vacancies for ‘deportation judges’

Immigration courts operate under the jurisdiction of the executive branch, not the independent judiciary that oversees federal courts. The courts report to the Justice Department, giving the Trump administration more power over immigration judges. Unlike criminal courts, lawyers are not assigned to those who cannot afford legal representation.

Ministry of Justice recently started advertising vacancies for “deportation judges,” specifically for officers located in San Francisco, Santa Ana, Sacramento and Los Angeles, where applicants are invited to “combat fraud and ensure that those who seek to exploit vulnerabilities in our immigration system are unsuccessful.”

A Justice Department spokesman said the effort was aimed at “restoring the integrity of our immigration system.”

“After four years of the Biden administration forcing immigration courts to implement de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of aliens, this Department of Justice is restoring the integrity of our immigration system and encouraging talented lawyers to join our mission to protect national security and public safety,” he wrote in an emailed statement.

The Trump administration has also temporarily appointed military attorneys to serve as immigration judges, which some experts say could violate posse comitatus, a 19th-century law that defines what can the military do on American soil.