There are a rapidly growing number of immigrants detained on Long Island and across the country who’ve successfully convinced judges the government jailed them illegally, bringing fresh attention to a centuries-old legal maneuver that’s become a lifeline for many swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Between Nov. 1 and Feb. 10, 108 people filed these petitions in the Eastern District — after only 19 in the first 10 months of last year, according to a Newsday analysis of federal court records.

Judges in the district, which covers Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, have freed the petitioner in 80 of the 95 cases where they have issued decisions, the analysis showed. The other cases are ongoing or were transferred to other courts.

Josefa Velásquez and Anastasia Valeeva report in NEWSDAY that nationwide, people have filed more than 19,000 habeas petitions since the start of 2025, more than three-quarters of them since November.

"The explosion of habeas cases is remarkable," said Peter Markowitz, an immigration law professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York City.

Habeas corpus, Latin for "produce the body," is one of the oldest tools in America’s legal system, giving judges the power to weigh whether someone’s detention is legal. So why the explosion?

The U.S. Justice Department last fall expanded use of a law allowing mandatory detention of immigrants without a bond hearing if they entered outside an official entry point, even if it was years or decades prior. Previous administrations, including during Trump’s first term, didn’t typically jail these people without additional reason, such as criminal charges against them.

More than 5,236 people had been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York City and surrounding suburbs, including Nassau and Suffolk counties, between Jan. 1 and Oct. 15, 2025, according to federal immigration data published by the Deportation Data Project research group and analyzed by Newsday.

ICE released data this month showing that 70,766 people were in detention nationwide, and have said nearly 3 million people had already been removed from the country. This means that fewer than 1% of people detained by ICE have been able to file petitions challenging their apprehension and jailing.

Immigrants targeted for deportation had cases heard in a dedicated immigration court, but the administration’s new policy effectively cut the judges there out of the bond hearing process. Lawyers for these men and women suddenly found themselves unable to protest their detentions in immigration court, so they turned to federal court.

Habeas corpus petitions have proved effective in federal court, experts told Newsday, since their sole intent is to challenge a person’s jailing by the government, and the administration is denying bond hearings or individual review of people’s cases.

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Starting this afternoon, New York State Department of Motor Vehicles will suspend in-person, online and phone services for several days as it replaces its outdated technology systems. Nicholas Grasso reports in NEWSDAY that as of 2 p.m. today, DMV locations across Long Island and the state will close their doors, according to a department news release.

Why is the DMV closing?

The DMV must halt services to install and test the new software that has been developed over the past two years, the department said. The upgraded system will make routine transactions at the DMV "more efficient for our staff and for customers alike," Walter McClure, the department's director of public information, told Newsday.

How will I be affected by the service shutdown?

New Yorkers must wait until Wednesday to perform any transaction at the DMV, such as renewing a license or registering a vehicle. Even completing a change of address, retrieving a driving record and other tasks drivers can routinely perform online from their home, will not be possible during the multiday closure.

When will services be restored?

All DMV locations are slated to reopen at the start of business Wednesday, according to the release. Online and phone services that allow New Yorkers to handle matters from home will also return Wednesday.

While DMV workers have trained for the upgrade, the department asked "for patience as we adjust to the new system in the days immediately after it launches," DMV commissioner Mark J.F. Schroeder said in the release.

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At least three people were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries after a trade parade car crash that closed County Road 39 in Southampton last night.

As reported on 27east.com, the crash occurred shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday, February 12, near the intersection of Dale Street and County Road 39, just to the east of North Sea Road.

Southampton Fire Department and Southampton Village Volunteer Ambulance and Southampton Volunteer Ambulance crews responded to the accident and transported three people to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

County Road 39 was closed for about 90 minutes, with motorists redirected around the accident scene between North Main Street and North Sea Road in Southampton between 7 and 8:45 p.m. last night.

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President Trump yesterday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. Lisa Friedman reports in THE NY TIMES that the action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather.

Led by a president who refers to climate change as a “hoax,” the administration is essentially saying that the vast majority of scientists around the world are wrong and that a hotter planet is not the menace that decades of research shows it to be.

It’s a rejection of fact that had been accepted for decades by presidents of both parties.

“This is about as big as it gets,” President Trump said at the White House as a smiling Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, stood by. “We are officially terminating the so-called ‘endangerment finding,’ a disastrous Obama-era policy,” said the president.

Mr. Zeldin…a Republican from Shirley, Long Island who for 8 years represented the 1st Congressional District including the East End… called it “the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” He accused Democrats of having launched an “ideological crusade” on climate change that “strangled entire sectors of the United States economy,” particularly the auto industry.

In discarding the endangerment finding, Administrator Zeldin is reversing positions he took as Congressman Zeldin from 2019 to 2023. During that time, he voted several times to address climate change, including a vote against an amendment to a spending bill that would have prohibited the E.P.A. from applying the endangerment finding. He even joined the Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group of House members.

In 2022, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of New York on a pledge to allow and accelerate natural gas drilling. After becoming Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. administrator, Mr. Zeldin ridiculed climate change and said he hoped to “drive a dagger” through it by repealing the endangerment finding.

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New York State Parks and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) are planning a controlled burn of piles of trees killed by the southern pine beetle in Napeague State Park on several upcoming dates, beginning today between the hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that the state agencies announced the burn at a public meeting at Montauk Downs State Park Tuesday evening, at which they gave an overview of planned thinning and burning work to reduce the fuel load in the park. Those plans have been in the works for the past several years.

Long Island’s pitch pines are a fire-dependent ecosystem, and the devastation caused by southern pine beetle infestation of the trees over the past five years has made the woods a tinderbox.

A wildfire burned an area the size of a football field in the state park last summer, leading New York Governor Kathy Hochul to pledge $2.2 million in funding for the project. “Controlled burning of slash piles is a critical tool in wildfire risk reduction and ecological management,” according to the state agencies. “Southern pine beetle infestation has resulted in thousands of dead pitch pine trees on site, which has increased available fuels and impacted forest health. Branches from the dead pitch pine trees have been piled to safely burn these materials.” Roads and trails within the park may be closed during the burns, which are each expected to take about one day.

To get notifications on upcoming prescribed burns at state parks the agencies recommend downloading the NYS Parks Explorer app and saving “Hither Hills State Park.” The state will also post notifications approximately 24 hours before burns on its webpage for Hither Hills (there is no separate page for Napeague), and residents within a one-mile radius will receive reverse 911 alerts.

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A powerful storm that hit Long Island in late January is still impacting the region’s natural world, helping some plants and animals but harming others. Effects include greater moisture retention for areas still blanketed by snow to changed feeding patterns for some animals, according to experts. Nicholas Spangler reports in NEWSDAY that some individual animal deaths are possible because of disruptions to food sources but population-level effects are unlikely.

Sea turtles would be adversely affected by the freeze, but those that live in Long Island’s bays or in the L.I. Sound left in September or October for warmer territory, said Maxine Montello, executive director of New York Marine Rescue Center in Riverhead. Electronic trackers that center staff put on turtles show one in the Bahamas, she said. Others go to the Carolinas or into the relatively warm Gulf Stream.

Physiological adaptations, such as a seal’s blubber, or behavioral ones, like changes to a deer’s foraging patterns, help them survive a prolonged freeze like the one we just experienced.

"These animals evolved over thousands of years" and are "well-adapted to this kind of weather," said Robert Marsh, a natural resource supervisor with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. "Even in the last 20, 30 years, we’ve had winters as cold or colder than this."

During winter in general and over these recent frigid weeks, Long Island was not just cold but calorie-sparse, a particular problem for warm-blooded mammals and birds that need to eat to maintain body temperature.

***

Bonac is bracing for a tumultuous Democratic primary for the Town of East Hampton's top job as East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen mounts a challenge against incumbent East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez. Alek Lewis reports in NEWSDAY that Larsen, 61, the mayor since September 2020 and a former village police chief, said Burke-Gonzalez has failed to make progress on a number of fronts. Affordable housing is still an acute issue in the region, he said, and the town's building department is slow to process applications, stifling development.

“There's a lot of mismanagement going on down there, and I'm just frustrated by watching it," said Larsen, who lives in East Hampton Village.

Burke-Gonzalez, 64, of Springs, has been town supervisor since 2024 and was a board member for a decade before that. She previously worked in advertising. Burke-Gonzalez is touting her record and experience in town government and has the backing of the East Hampton Town and Suffolk County Democratic Committees.

She points to accomplishments including beach renourishment and dredging projects, the transformation of the historic Montauk Playhouse into a community center, millions for land preservation, and upgrades to parks and beaches.

"There's still work we need to get done,” Burke-Gonzalez said. “We've got a great team in place … and we're getting good things done for our community.”

In East Hampton Town, Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 2-1, according to data from the State Board of Elections. As of November, there were 9,877 Democrats, 4,207 Republicans and 6,380 unaffiliated voters registered to vote in the town. East Hampton has not had a Republican supervisor since 2013, and Democrats have won supervisor races by double-digits margins since then.

Republicans have yet to name a candidate for supervisor. Manny Vilar, chair of the East Hampton Republican Committee, said the committee is screening candidates to run in November’s general election.

Regarding the intraparty feuding, Rich Schaffer, chair of the Suffolk Democratic Committee, said Larsen’s push to enroll more Democrats who will vote for him was akin to party-raiding. He likened the tactic to Conservatives and Republicans who, Democrats say, have hijacked the liberal Working Families Party ballot line in the towns of Huntington and Southampton. The tactic helps to siphon votes from Democratic tickets.

Larsen called the party-raiding accusation "ridiculous." Because of the Democrats' enrollment advantage, Larsen said, East Hampton Town residents have to vote in the primary to effectively influence the town supervisor's race.

"Just like in New York City, if you win the Democratic line here in East Hampton, you're almost guaranteed to win the general election," he said.