As brush fires swept the Everglades area in western Miami-Dade County last month, the Krome Detention Facility, used by U.S.. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was evacuated. Hundreds of immigrant detainees were put on buses and planes, and temporarily shipped as far as Louisiana and Colorado while the fires burned nearby.
The incident has opened a can of worms in federal court after a federal judge was notified that 47 of those detainees were shipped outside the Southern District of Florida in direct violation of court orders. When Miami-based Judge Michael Moore was alerted to the 47 violations, he ordered a deeper look into how often ICE had violated similar court orders in recent months.
The answer alarmed him, and prompted him to respond with force in a hearing on Thursday morning.
Attorneys at the Department of Justice alerted Moore that an estimated 116 detainees have recently been removed from South Florida in direct violation of court orders, a significant increase from the original 47 number. Some of those violations were never reported to the court until Moore started asking. One court order violation was reported to a federal judge the date before the hearing, weeks after the fact. During the hearing on the rampant violations, a visibly frustrated Moore told attorneys for ICE and the Justice Department that the violations would not stand.
"If you're telling me it's incompetence instead of willingness I can accept that," said Moore. "But we need competence."
Thursday morning's hearing was jam-packed with interns and clerks of Moore's fellow federal judges, waiting to hear of the widespread ramifications of what the judge would say. Orders from a long list of federal judges had been violated, including a handful that came from Moore himself. Moore had to allow some to sit in the jury box in order to accommodate the size of the crowd.
"I don't want you to hide behind the brushfire, because there are cases that didn't have to do with the brushfire," Moore told ICE and DOJ attorneys. "There have been a number of transfers over the previous months that had nothing to do with the brushfires."
He noted that some detainees not only had been moved to other states, but some have been "removed from the United States" in direct violation of court orders.
The court orders requiring detainees not to be removed from the Southern District of Florida were habeus corpus petitions — the mechanism that allows detainees to challenge the legality of their detention.
ICE has been routinely denying immigration detainees the bond hearings where they can contest the legality of their detention, a legal stance pro-immigration advocates have been actively fighting.
In May, a federal appeals court judge in Atlanta ordered ICE to provide bond hearings to all immigrant detainees in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. The ruling stemmed from issues that cropped up at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami, a short walk from the federal courthouse where Thursday's hearing took place.
Moore and other district judges ordered detainees to stay in South Florida because they were awaiting their bond hearings as a matter of basic due process.
An attorney for ICE told Moore that the department could "accept that there was incompetence" in the cases, and steps were being taken to correct it. She said a "habeus unit" has been formed that will place an ICE official directly into the Southern District of Florida's U.S. Attorney's Office.
With ICE and the DOJ working together everything should run smoother, she said.
Matthew Feely, the DOJ attorney on the case, apologized for the court order violations and said the Southern District of Florida's office has been overwhelmed with habeus corpus petitions, stemming from the Department of Homeland Security's stance that it does not have to offer bond hearing to immigrant detainees. The stance has created a "crisis" in South Florida that started last June, said Feely. The "increase in [ICE] enforcement" and a shortage of bed space in South Florida has forced ICE to violate court orders.
Feely laid out some numbers to illustrate the point.
In 2022, there were only 23 habeus corpus petitions filed in the district, he said. In 2023 there were 31. But between June of 2025 and July 10, 2026, there were about 1,800 petitions filed.
At the same time, Feely said the amount of attorneys handling civil cases in the Southern District of Florida has plummeted by 40% since last year.
"We're struggling here, your honor," said Feely, while adding that the DOJ is trying to hire to fill the vacant positions.
"I'm sympathetic, but it looks like a crisis of your own making," responded Moore, who was appointed to the court by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. "If you didn't advance these legal theories you would not be getting sued."
The judge then took a sympathetic turn towards the DOJ and away from ICE, entities that are technically on the same side of the court case. If he directly ordered detainees to have bond hearings in immigration court, the DOJ would simply have to comply with it, even though ICE has been reluctant to ask for bond hearings. Immigration courts fall under the jurisdiction of the DOJ.
Moore pointed to a recent case where he ordered a bond hearing for a detainee and the detainee was simply released from custody by ICE, rendering the habeus corpus petition moot.
Some detainees might be released after a bond hearing, while others could stay in immigration custody. But the "crisis" of the compounding backlog would certainly be relieved if he ordered every case to have a bond hearing, Moore mused.
The DOJ's Feely responded that "any way to increase efficiencies would be welcome."
Moore then ordered that nine cases before him be granted bond hearings.
"Say thank you," said Moore. Chuckles could be heard throughout the courtroom.
The remaining cases where court orders were violated were technically before other federal judges in the Southern District of Florida. Judge Moore then turned to the crowd of interns and clerks who work with the other federal judges and suggested that they transfer all of the remaining cases to him so he could consider them as a "consolidated case" and order bond hearings for all.
The DOJ said that while it estimated 116 court orders had been violated it needed two weeks to confirm that number, and so a follow-up hearing will take place on August 6 and 2 p.m.
As a parting gift, Judge Moore had some words of wisdom for ICE and the DOJ about if they continued to try to deny immigrant detainees bond hearing in light of the May order from the federal appeals court. The order was clear, he said, and they should think hard about whether they want to violate the spirit of it, lest they want to escalate things.
"If I had to be on Polymarket I know what side of the bet I'd like to be on," said Moore.
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