Brian Acuna, a deputy field office director with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervises a tactical team during an attempted early morning raid to pick up an illegal immigrant who is a multiple DUI offender and is on the deportation list in Kenner , La. Wednesday, June 8, 2022. (Photo by Max Becherer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate) STAFF PHOTO BY MAX BECHERER A federal judge in Louisiana has ordered the federal government to release a transgender woman who authorities held in ICE detention for a year despite being unable to legally deport her — and who they sent to Mexico against a judge’s order meant to protect her from torture there. The woman, Britania Uriostegui Rios, who spent some of her detention at Winn Correctional Center, made national headlines in November after her wrongful deportation. Authorities allowed her back into the United States but continued to keep her in immigration detention while they tried to deport her a third country, according to court records. Immigration officials had made no “visible progress” toward deporting Rios since January, and multiple third countries refused to accept her, Judge Jerry Edwards, Jr., of Louisiana’s Western District court, said in an order issued Tuesday. He found that detaining Uriostegui Rios was no longer justified because it was not likely that the government would be able to deport her in the “reasonably foreseeable future.” The case is part of a larger battle that President Donald Trump’s administration is waging in courts across the country, as it tests legal limits on immigration detention and tries to detain immigrants for prolonged periods of time, even when they cannot go back to their home countries. Detention of immigrants who have been ordered deported is not supposed to be indefinite, but there are no strict rules for when the government must release detainees. Edwards’ order comes shortly after the Trump administration lost similar cases in Louisiana’s Middle District Court. Federal judges there ordered that certain ICE detainees be released from the “Louisiana Lockup,” an immigration detention facility on the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Gov. Jeff Landry and other Republican leaders blasted those decisions, which they described as an affront to public safety.The administration is also holding in custody people without criminal histories for prolonged periods of time. Amid Trump’s campaign to detain and deport immigrants in record numbers, courts across the country have been flooded with habeas petitions, lawsuits that argue detainees are being unlawfully held and should therefore be released. That was the mechanism through which Uriostegui Rios, who has a criminal history, got out of detention. She, like many other detainees, argued for release based on a landmark 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision known as Zadvydas v. Davis. That case set a precedent for how long authorities may detain immigrants with final removal orders.The case held that, generally, the government is supposed to deport such immigrants within six months. After that, continued detention may be unlawful if there is no significant likelihood of deportation in the “reasonably foreseeable future.” In other words, reaching the six-month mark gives immigrants stronger grounds to challenge their detention under Zadvydas. The rule does not apply to people with pending immigration cases. Edwards, a Joe Biden appointee and the judge handling Uriostegui Rios’ case, initially permitted her detention past six months. In a January decision, he described the case as “close,” but sided with the federal government based on evidence of ongoing efforts to deport Uriostegui Rios to a third country.But Edwards warned that Uriostegui Rios’ detention could become unlawful as time passed — and on Tuesday, he reversed his original decision and said she ought to be released. In his order, Edwards said the government had failed to show progress toward deporting Uriostegui Rios after sending requests to Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Canada, Senegal, Ecuador, Portugal, Seychelles and Liberia. Several countries rejected the requests, and the rest never responded, Edwards wrote, adding that the most recent requests were made in January.Edwards also stressed that 12 months had passed since Uriostegui’s removal order became final. The likelihood that continued immigration detention is lawful wanes the longer detainees stay in custody, he wrote, citing the Zadvydas case. Uriostegui Rios came to the U.S. in 2003 and became a lawful permanent resident in 2012, an ICE agent said in a court filing. But she received multiple criminal convictions, including a 2009 conviction for sexual solicitation and a 2023 conviction for assault with a deadly weapon, the official said.In March 2025, an immigration judge ordered Uriostegui Rios’ deportation but simultaneously blocked her removal to Mexico under the Convention Against Torture, finding that she could face persecution there because of her gender identity, court records show. But the federal government “inadvertently” deported her to Mexico, Department of Justice attorneys acknowledged in legal filings.Critics have accused the Trump administration, which argues it is detaining immigrants to protect the public, of using ICE detention to punish people with criminal convictions twice, after they have served their time.Immigration rights advocates who helped handle Uriostegui Rios’ case hailed Edwards’ decision as a victory but said Uriostegui Rios’ lengthy stay in custody was evidence of a broken system. “It’s heartbreaking that people like Britania are losing years of their lives in places that amount to nothing more than for-profit prisons,” said Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “This ruling rejects the government's cruel perversion of immigration law: using detention centers to punish people who have already served their time, turning civil detention into a de facto life sentence with no due process.” The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not comment on this story.Louisiana houses the second-most ICE detainees in the country behind Texas. Most are housed in facilities operated by private prison companies, whose contracts with the federal government are worth billions of dollars nationwide. During Trump’s first year in office, the number of people held in ICE detention across the country rose from approximately 40,000 to 66,000, according to a January report from the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit focused on immigration rights.