Latest in habeas
Earlier this April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied a petition for en banc rehearing in Hamama v. Adducci, finalizing its reversal of the district court’s preliminary injunctions staying removal of a class of Iraqi nationals.
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation v. Mattis is a would-be habeas corpus petition brought by the ACLU Foundation on behalf of an unnamed American citizen whom the U.S. government has been holding in military detention in Iraq since September.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a John Doe habeas petition on behalf of the still-not-identified American citizen the U.S. military is holding as an enemy combatant in Iraq (for background, see here). The case is Doe v. Mattis, No. 17-cv-02069, and it was filed in federal district court in D.C. Here is my preliminary assessment.
DOD has confirmed that an (as-yet-unidentified) American citizen is being held in U.S. military custody in Syria or Iraq as an enemy combatant. More specifically, the available information asserts that he was a fighter for the Islamic State who was captured in Syria by U.S.-friendly forces (or at least surrendered to those forces), and was then turned over to the U.S.
How significant is this development from a legal perspective?