Editor’s Note: Anyone who has spent any time in the U.S. Courts’ online records system will be familiar with the following words: ‘You do not have permission to access this document.’ It’s a common PACER refrain that signifies that the court document you’re attempting to review is shielded from outsiders. There are many perfectly valid reasons, ranging from medical records to personal accounts of victims, that warrant blocking certain sensitive records from the public. But with the unprecedented rise of ‘habeas’ cases this year (in particular individuals trying to be released from immigration detention), the old processes that sought to protect a detainee’s privacy is quickly coming into conflict with a public that wants to get a sense of the size, scope, and legal arguments used to justify a surge of immigration efforts in the last year. For this week’s The Rabbit Hole, reporter Madeleine O’Neill gives us a glimpse into the army of volunteers that are traveling to federal courthouse around the country to unmask nearly 50,000 dockets. Given the thrust of this story, we’ve dropped our usual Sunday paywall but you can still support this type of work here or become a paid subscriber. - Seamus
Hundreds of street arrests that court records show disproportionately targeted Latinos in and around New York City. Detainees shuffled across the country one day before a congressional oversight visit. A judicial emergency in the Eastern District of California.
Each of these stories came to light because of habeas corpus — a centuries-old legal writ that has become a powerful tool for freeing immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation campaign. Because they’re public court filings, habeas corpus petitions also offer a window into the often cryptic world of immigration enforcement.
But there’s a catch. Across the country, the nearly 50,000 habeas corpus petitions filed in recent immigration cases are public records only in theory, because a 2007 court rule makes the petitions impossible to access online like most other federal court records.
The rule has hobbled attorneys, journalists, and researchers trying to gather information about arrests and detention in this unprecedented era of immigration enforcement.
“The effect is it takes much longer to get access to these records in a particular case and it makes it basically impossible to get records in a lot of these cases at once,” said Renee Griffin, a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
“It’s a real nationwide problem,” Griffin said.
A new project called Habeas Dockets is working to counteract this roadblock with help from volunteers. According to the project’s founder, 400 people across the country have contributed court records to the site, which publishes habeas corpus filings online for anyone to read them.
Court Watch spoke with founder John Kyle Cronan, a software developer from Chicago with no legal background besides his own curiosity.
“I’m the kind of person who has a PACER account just to look at stuff sometimes,” Cronan said. (Who among us?)
He first noticed the effect of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2(c) in April 2025, when he tried to access court documents about a group of people the federal government was trying to send to CECOT, a maximum security prison in El Salvador known for its harsh conditions.
When Cronan tried to open the documents, he ran into the same message that greets anyone who tries to access these records online: “You do not have permission to view this document.”
A court clerk explained to Cronan that he could come in and view these public records in person at a courthouse kiosk. The courthouse was in northern Texas. Cronan was in Chicago.
“You’ve got me there,” Cronan remembers thinking. He decided to organize a volunteer effort to make these court records accessible online. The project has become Cronan’s full-time job, and he recently started fundraising to grow the site. Cronan relies on help from law students, paralegals, and volunteer attorneys to review each filing for sensitive information that should be redacted, even though he’s not legally required to do so.
The personal details potentially contained in immigration filings are the reason why there is a limit on electronic access in the first place. The privacy rule recognizes that immigration cases, like social security cases, are particularly likely to contain sensitive information—hence the shielding.
IMAGE: Judges around the country has made piecemeal orders providing for electronic access to certain habeas lawsuits. Source: Mahdawi v. Trump. 2:25-cv-00389
Immigration matters are usually handled in immigration court, which is separate from the federal court system and does not allow public access to filings. In some cases, however, a person seeking asylum or other protected status might end up taking their claims to a federal judge, at which point the filings become public records.
Those papers could contain highly sensitive information about trafficking or domestic violence victims, said Daniella Prieshoff, senior managing attorney at the Tahirih Justice Center in Baltimore. Making that information easily accessible online could be dangerous for vulnerable clients, who are fearful of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in addition to their abusers or traffickers.
“It’s not just ICE, but it’s persecutors, abusers, traffickers,” Prieshoff said. “Our clients have very realistic concerns that those individuals will be able to find them at all costs, so having that parameter of allowing access to those records, but at a physical location, … I think that sets up a boundary that helps protect survivors.”
The flood of habeas corpus petitions filed under the second Trump administration is somewhat different than typical immigration cases filed in normal times. Usually an obscure area of law, habeas corpus petitions have become an increasingly important way to challenge the legality of an immigrant’s detention as ICE holds more people in facilities that are often ill-equipped to handle them.
These petitions are often filed hastily in the hours or days after a person has been arrested. They rarely contain the contents of asylum applications or other sensitive information, but lay out the bare bones facts of the petitioner’s detention.
Cronan’s team examines habeas filings before making them available online to ensure that any personal information, such as details about a person’s fear of persecution in their home country, is redacted.
IMAGE: Online Habeas Lawsuit Tracker. Source: https://habeasdockets.org/
Habeas Dockets first launched a year ago and became a nonprofit, operating under the name Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative, earlier this year.
“With the return of Trump, I really feel like the issues of immigration enforcement are the worst of all of it,” Cronan said. “I feel really strongly that what they’re doing is wrong and is harming people.”
About 29,000 documents have been uploaded to the site, Cronan said, with help from a group of volunteers that includes students, retirees, working folks with flexible schedules, and attorneys.
The electronic shielding rule is essentially an artifact of the early days of the internet, and much like PACER itself, it has not kept up with the times. The rule assumes that lawyers will go to the courthouse in person to do legal research on habeas cases, which is no longer the case, Cronan said. It also prevents attorneys, journalists, and researchers from accessing cases outside their geographic area, a significant hindrance as courts across the country handle thousands of new habeas cases.
The rule also has the side effect of making it harder to scrutinize the claims the government makes in habeas cases.
“It’s convenient for them,” Cronan said. The Habeas Dockets project will serve as an archive of the legal response to the federal government’s unprecedented fast-track approach to deportation.
Even when volunteers go to courthouses in person to view habeas filings, they sometimes run into roadblocks. At some district courts, clerks allow members of the public to view immigration records at access kiosks, but don’t allow them to print the pages out. You’re also not allowed to save the files to the computer or to a thumb drive, making it impossible to share the documents.
Habeas Dockets managed to get that policy changed in the Western District of Pennsylvania, Cronan said, but it remains a problem at four other district courts across the country. When printing is possible, Habeas Dockets reimburses volunteers for those costs from donations, Cronan said.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press also urged district courts to curb the electronic access restriction in a series of letters sent to the chief judges in five districts last year.
“This restriction prevents timely public access to fast-moving legal developments and impedes the ability of the press to report on critical, newsworthy matters,” RCFP wrote.
Two district courts declined, Griffin said, and others said they would send the request to their rules committee. None of the courts have acted on the request.
Madeleine O’Neill is a freelance reporter in Baltimore.
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This piece was part of our weekly Sunday Series we call The Rabbit Hole where we choose a single federal court docket, filing, or topic and dive deep into the details. You can read past issues on topics ranging from news deserts to the lack of consistent funding for court-appointed defense attorneys on our site.
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