miamiherald Exactly 260 days after immigration agents arrested a prominent Haitian businessman at his South Miami home, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles questioned why Dimitri Vorbe had been held for so long without due process. “I am concerned about the whole idea that the petitioner can just be detained indefinitely,” Gayles said on June 9 at Vorbe’s hearing on a habeas corpus petition, which challenged the government’s legal basis for detaining him. “How long can the government just keep him in custody if it can’t effectuate his removal?” Exactly 53 days since that hearing, Gayles has still not ruled on whether to order Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release Vorbe, raising the question about why a legal process that should be swift has dragged on for nearly a year. Vorbe’s habeas petition forced the government to justify why it can legally hold him. Although Vorbe entered the country legally and was already before an immigration court at the time of his controversial arrest, he is among thousands of detainees now stranded in South Florida because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants since last year. The record number of immigration-related habeas cases, leading to a massive backlog, far surpasses the typical number of a few dozen per year in South Florida under prior presidents. “The only thing I would say to our outstanding judges in this district is: ‘Don’t blame the victims or their lawyers,’” Miami immigration attorney Ira Kurzban said as he condemned the lack of action on habeas corpus cases. 🔗: Read more at the link in our bio ✍️: Jay Weaver and Jacqueline Charles 📷: Courtesy of the Vorbe family View all 132 comments