DOJ Now Citing Fake AI-Generated Cases To Keep ICE Detainees Locked Up
from the this-must-not-happen-in-a-free-society dept
You’d think that watching multiple lawyers get caught red-handed using AI to file briefs full of made-up citations would cause everyone in the legal profession — especially prosecutors — to double-check their own. You would, of course, be wrong. And the latest offender is not just some random lawyer. It’s the DOJ itself, which cited a nonexistent Sixth Circuit case to argue that an ICE detainee shouldn’t be able to challenge a stay that prevented him from posting a bond that had already been granted, thereby leaving him in detention.
This story hits on two different threads we’ve been covering over the last few years separately. Having them collide somehow makes both worse.
We’ve covered plenty of cases where lawyers for one party (or both, or sometimes judges) are misusing AI to do their writing for them, generating fictitious cases in support of whatever argument they’re seeking to make. This is troubling on many levels, because one of the things any lawyer is supposed to do before submitting anything to a court is check the citations. Historically that has been to make sure the cases cited haven’t been overruled. In these cases, not only is that not happening, they’re literally putting in cases that don’t exist, citing precedents that are completely fictitious.
Our other line of stories touched on here is how ICE and the DOJ have been stomping all over detainees’ basic constitutional rights.
This is one of many cases in which lawyers for a detainee have filed a habeas petition — and it’s a clean example of those two threads colliding in practice. I’ll let Judge Hala Y. Jarbou summarize the basics of what happened:
Petitioner, a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee, initiated this action by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241. (Pet., ECF No. 1.) An immigration judge had granted Petitioner a bond of $35,000, but the bond order was stayed pending appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.19(i) (2025). Petitioner argued that the 90-day automatic stay provision in § 1003.19(i) violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and sought an order requiring the Government to allow him to post bond. While this lawsuit was pending, the automatic stay of Petitioner’s bond order expired. The Government now represents that the bond order is back in effect and Petitioner will be released if he posts the $35,000 bond. (Status Report, ECF No. 10.) Accordingly, the Court finds that the habeas petition is moot and dismisses it without prejudice.
Already frustrating enough that the 90-day “automatic stay” that the detainee was challenging ended before the actual case could be decided, making the whole thing moot.
But… there’s something else the judge had on her mind. The DOJ appeared to have a totally fabricated citation in an earlier filing:
There is one additional issue in this case that the Court must address. In the Government’s response to the Court’s initial order to show cause, it stated the following:
More recently, the Sixth Circuit has reiterated that § 1226(e) bars challenges that “ask the court to reweigh the evidence underlying a bond decision or second-guess the Immigration Judge’s discretionary judgment.” See Taylor v. Hott, 724 F. App’x 387, 392 (6th Cir. 2018) (district court lacked jurisdiction to review IJ’s bond denial where petitioner challenged flight-risk determination) . . . .
(Gov’t’s Resp. 9, ECF No. 5.) The cited case, Taylor v. Hott, is not located at the identified page of the Federal Appendix. Indeed, page 387 is contained within a different opinion—Atkins v. CGI Techs. & Sols., Inc., 724 F. App’x 383 (6th Cir. 2018)—which is about commercial arbitration, not immigration bond determinations. In its research, the Court was unable to identify a Sixth Circuit case with the caption Taylor v. Hott, or any federal case containing the quoted language. Thus, it seems this citation was likely produced by generative artificial intelligence (“AI”).
It is already bad enough when you have a fabricated citation in a civil case between two private parties. But here we’re literally talking about a case involving someone’s freedom. And the government is filing AI-generated fake cases?!?
We should be livid. But the judge lets them off with a little slap on the wrist and a “please don’t do this again”:
It should be obvious that any attorney who uses AI must scrupulously review its work product to ensure that the cited cases exist and that the citations accurately and fairly represent the underlying case law. The duty of candor towards this tribunal demands no less.
Although the Court will not presently impose sanctions for this conduct, it goes without saying that the Government must ensure its future filings with this Court do not include nonexistent case law
And, yes, judges tend to be fairly restrained in issuing sanctions, often giving misbehaving lawyers many more chances than they probably deserve before rushing to punishment. But, again, this was someone’s freedom on the line. And the DOJ literally directly — whether intentionally or not — misled the court with a precedent that doesn’t exist. That should never happen.
We all know the DOJ is having trouble staffing lawyers. Over 10,000 lawyers have left the federal government since Donald Trump came back into office. They’re offering large bonuses for jobs that lawyers used to deliberately take massive pay cuts to get on their resume. Pretty much everyone agrees it’s a staffing crisis, to the point that earlier this year an apparently exhausted Assistant US Attorney, Julie Le, asked an angry judge to find her in contempt just so she could get some sleep:
Attorney Julie Le was representing the government at a hearing over ICE’s failure to follow court orders and immediately release people that it had wrongfully detained. When Judge Jerry Blackwell asked why the agency is not complying, Le said that the government was “overwhelmed” by the legal challenges to Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, and that trying to get ICE to comply with court orders has required nonstop work for an office depleted by resignations.
“I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep,” Le said. “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need.”
Given that kind of work environment, is it really any surprise that the few remaining DOJ lawyers would turn to hallucinating AI tools to “generate” their legal filings?
But if you’re starting to feel any ounce of sympathy for the DOJ here, let’s be clear: fuck that. If the DOJ can’t do their fucking job they shouldn’t be throwing people into jails, detainment centers, concentration camps, or anything of that nature. If they want to go around fighting habeas petitions, maybe don’t lock up so many people without any ounce of due process. And if they want to keep people detained then hire enough lawyers to handle the government’s case load.
And if that’s too difficult because good lawyers have no interest in working for a fascist regime that is stomping all over basic fundamental freedoms in every direction, well, maybe work on that rather than locking innocent people up with no due process. Donald Trump’s administration put this DOJ in this position and there’s simply zero excuse for judges letting the DOJ get away with this sort of absolute bullshit.
Judges should be issuing sanctions left and right. They should be reporting lawyers to ethics committees and the relevant bar associations. They should be demanding that the government actually obey the fucking law, and not deny anyone their rights.
Want to stop the DOJ from locking people up with fictitious cases? Start issuing actual consequences to those lawyers and anyone else at the DOJ who had anything to do with this.
Filed Under: ai, ai hallucinations, doj, hala jarbou, ice detentions, izzeddin daghra, julie le
Comments on “DOJ Now Citing Fake AI-Generated Cases To Keep ICE Detainees Locked Up”
This reminds me of the time the president tried to intimidate a journalist into pretending an obvious Photoshop was a real tattoo.
I think you misunderstand the hiring problem
Lawyers don’t mind whether they are working for fascists or not. But like many other professionals, they do want to assemble a track record of competence.
In the legal profession, that means a track record of making justice happen.
In the current DOJ, getting a job there gives you about the same kind of leg forward in the legal profession as having worked at Guantanamo Bay provides when applying at a kindergarten.
Bureaucracy is a weapon wielded by the malicious as well as the indifferent. We’ll violate human and civil rights and shrug and say we had a staff shortage, so it’s not our fault.
The default should be (and was naively believed by many to be) that if you can’t provide due process, you shouldn’t be detaining people. But due process only matters to people who want justice. The Trump administration only wants vicious cruelty and unregulated corruption and unrelenting profiteering.
And they’ll be the same as our resident bootlicker, screaming “you just don’t want the laws enforced,” when you point out that due process is the law.
Related AI use...
Spoke with a friend in the real estate appraisal profession recently. He told me about seeing AI tool use in property appraisals. In at least one case the AI tool completely fabricated comparison properties in an appraisal report.
Re: same tricks...
Fake RE assessments have been going on forever. Orange Menace not the foremost example…
20 years ago, we applied for HELOC, home equity line of credit. I worked at home in those days, quiet street… No one ever came to look at the house.
Bank shared their report from the inspector, who had clearly made up everything! Said the house needed exterior paint and had missing shake on the roof.
My house was freshly painted and had new asphalt tile roof!
I told the bank they should file fraud charges and at least get their $200 back! They never pursued it.
One of the tragedies that the judge in this case is sidestepping (perhaps because the plaintiff did not demand an answer) is that ICE can continue denying bonds “pending appeal” because no judgement on the issue happened in this case. And it’ll happen each and every time because 90 days is a shorter period than the turnaround time on court cases.
Yes.
Lawyers are responsible for the things they submit in court. That’s literally the beginning and the end of their job description: being responsible for the position their client wants to make in court. That is why we, as a society, have lawyers. They are legal professionals. In fact, getting it right is so important that they make you go to extra school for many years and then take a test and then join a guild. The entire point of all of this is to have some kind of standards.
Imagine for a moment if doctors were allowed to use AI to conjure up test results for their patients and then use that as a basis for treating them. Oops, sorry about the chemo. Don’t blame me. ChatGPT told me you had cancer.
Let’s call citing non-existing cases what it is: lies. It is lying. It is equally as bad as if the lawyer made up the cases from their own imagination rather than using a random text generator to concoct it. Refraining from telling lies in court is not a “best practice”. It should be the very most basic elementary requirement, even more essential than wearing clothes. That it’s happening in cases where peoples’ freedom is at stake is almost beyond the point. It is a firetruck showing up at a burning building with no water. The fact that there are people trapped in the inferno doesn’t make it worse. It is the level at which the people supposedly here to help should just leave.
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Spoiler alert.
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I see the “insightful” and “funny” buttons but how do I rate a comment as “depressing”?
Perhaps time to move it up one step from sanctions: note that the filing doesn’t cite any valid cases to back it up and then rule as if the gov’t hadn’t responded. No second chances, no amendments, if they have cases they think are on point they should’ve put those in their response in the first place.
Yet another example of AI being needed to do something no human would ever do.