When federal judges in Minnesota started issuing orders at 10 p.m. on Sundays, Nico knew the legal landscape had fundamentally shifted. "These judges are working seven days a week," he says. "The effort they have put in since December is something that people need to write books about one day."

Nico, a Minneapolis-based immigration attorney who launched his own firm nearly three years ago, has become one of the most active habeas corpus practitioners in the country. His caseload tells the story of a profession transformed: what was once 85% detained removal defense work has now flipped to 85-90% habeas petitions, a shift that began in August 2025 and shows no signs of slowing.

"Habeas corpus is the most important writ we have in America," he says. "It's the most important constitutional right, civil right, we have in America."

How Nico Found Immigration Law: Saying Yes to Opportunity

Like many immigration attorneys, Nico didn't plan this career. He didn't take a single immigration class in law school. He simply needed a job.

"I applied pretty broadly," he recalls. "The first place that offered me a job was an immigration law firm that did a lot of removal defense and humanitarian issues."

What he discovered surprised him. Immigration law made sense to him in ways other practice areas hadn't. More importantly, it kept challenging him.

"I liked how deep and wide the field is and how you can stay in it for an entire career and still be learning new things every day, even in the parts of the law that you deal with constantly."

He found himself good at it. The work was intellectually demanding, the clients were fighting for their lives and their families, and the complexity kept him engaged. After developing broad skills at his first firm, he made a decision that would define his career.

Why Nico Started His Solo Immigration Law Practice

When Nico went solo, he gave two answers for why: the practical one and the deeper truth.

"The real answer is I knew that my boss couldn't pay me enough money no matter how much she tried to," he says candidly. "The only way I was ever going to make what I thought was fair was by going out on my own. It seemed better to bet on myself than to go work for someone else again for a nominal increase in wages."

But there was another layer. Autonomy.

"It's a lot harder for me to be upset about working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, when I have put myself in that position as opposed to someone else putting me in that position."

Asked what advice he would give his younger self before starting the firm, Nico's answer cuts against the typical entrepreneur narrative. "I don't think that I would have been able to give myself any advice," he says. "Do everything exactly the way you did it is what I would have told myself."

The transition felt natural. He found office space with other lawyers for camaraderie, stayed small until he needed to hire, and brought on associates and law clerks when the work demanded it. Nearly three years in, he has no regrets.

Inside Nico's Immigration Law Practice: From Detention Defense to Habeas Corpus

When Nico launched his firm, he made a strategic decision: narrow the focus. At his previous firm, he had tried everything: employment cases, federal litigation, humanitarian applications, asylum, immigration court. The breadth was educational but unsustainable.

"That's too many things to track, it's not efficient," he realized.

He pivoted to detention cases: removal defense for people in mandatory detention or stuck in jail over flight risk or danger determinations. Within his first year, 85% of his practice was detained work, with a handful of U visas, USCIS filings, criminal cases, and civil rights matters rounding out the portfolio.

Then August 2025 changed everything.

He started filing habeas petitions for people with final orders of removal who faced prolonged detention or had their orders of supervision revoked without proper process. The work exploded.

"That picked up super fast to where I'm currently probably 85 to 90% habeas, and my removal defense is down to 5 or 10% of my caseload."

The math is staggering. As of March 2026, Nico has as many new cases as he had accumulated through all of May 2025. Habeas cases turn over fast, and the volume is relentless. He estimates 15 to 20 new clients per month, possibly more.

The Realities of ICE Detention: What Nico Sees on the Ground

Nico maintains a heavy presence in federal courts across the Southern District of Texas, the Western District of Oklahoma, and Minnesota. That geographic spread gives him a unique window into how different parts of the country treat detained immigrants.

What he has seen is disturbing.

"The detention conditions are horrendous," he says bluntly. "I've dealt with lots of clients that have done federal prison time. I've met clients in federal prisons. I know lots of clients that have done state prison time. These detention facilities for ICE are worse. It's harder than doing fed time. It's harder than doing state prison."

He pauses to find the right comparison. "They're basically third-world refugee camps that we've plopped down into the United States."

The conditions create impossible calculations for his clients. Filing a habeas petition to get out of detention takes time. During that time, a client might choose to pursue an asylum case, which triggers appeals, which can mean a year or more locked up waiting for resolution.

"The resilience of a lot of these immigrants to just put their head down and deal with it has been astounding," Nico says. "But at the same time, I have to be really careful when I'm advising clients to make sure that they understand what they might be signing up for."

Sometimes the honest advice is the hardest to give: that spending tens of thousands of dollars and enduring months of additional detention might not be worth it when a voluntary departure order offers a quicker, cheaper exit.

"The illegal actions of the government and how they're treating these detainees is having the intended effect," he acknowledges. "It's causing me to change my advice."

Forum Shopping and Jurisdiction Games: How ICE Moves Detainees to Texas

One trend Nico has documented gets almost no news coverage: the deliberate movement of detainees from states like Minnesota to Texas to manipulate legal outcomes.

"They'll arrest immigrants and then move them out of Minnesota as fast as they can and get them into West Texas or South Texas," he explains.

The strategy serves multiple purposes. First, it complicates attorney-client communication. Second, it avoids the habeas jurisdiction of Minnesota's federal courts. Third, and most consequentially, it manipulates venue rules.

"The way immigration law and venue stuff works is venue is in the area where the person is when they are placed into proceedings," Nico explains. "So they can arrest someone who's not in proceedings in Minnesota, bring them down to Texas, issue the Notice to Appear in Texas, and all of a sudden it's a Texas case."

Even when a case remains venued elsewhere, moving a detainee to Texas means the Texas immigration court has administrative control. When that person requests bond, they get a Texas immigration judge deciding, even if their case is venued across the country with a judge who would grant it.

"There's a lot of really weird stuff like that," Nico says.

The timeline pressures are intense. At the very beginning of Metro Surge, ICE was driving detainees over the border to Iowa as fast as possible, sometimes not even stopping to process fingerprints because attorneys were racing to file habeas petitions before the transfer.

"It was really that tight of a race," he recalls.

What Nico Would Change About Immigration Law: Judicial Review and Independence

Asked what single change he would make to immigration policy, Nico doesn't hesitate.

"I'd get rid of every jurisdiction-stripping provision and make a direct path of review to the federal district courts."

In simpler terms: he wants it easier to get an Article III judge, a federal judge with lifetime tenure and constitutional independence, to review what immigration agencies are doing.

The current system, he argues, is fundamentally broken. Immigration judges are technically classified as "government attorneys" who can be hired and fired at will. They have no job protection for following the law as they see it.

"They're totally captive to the whims of the current administration," Nico says. "They need more autonomy if our immigration law is going to actually mean anything."

He points to stark numbers. When the current administration took office, the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled in favor of the government about 60% of the time on appeal. After recent changes to the BIA's makeup, that rate has climbed to 97%.

"The agency is totally and completely captive," he says.

The recent treatment of temporary military judges illustrates the point. Some followed orders and denied virtually every asylum application. A few applied the law as written and granted cases when the evidence supported it. One judge had a 50% grant rate.

"Those temporary immigration judges that did that immediately got fired," Nico says. "They only kept the ones that denied all of them."

Nico's Advice for Immigrants Facing Detention and Removal

For immigrants worried about enforcement, Nico offers three pieces of practical advice.

First, build an emergency network. Not just a contact, but a network of people who know what to do if you disappear.

"If you go missing because you've been picked up randomly by ICE, have someone who knows what lawyer to call that can tell you, 'I think he got picked up. Can you help me find him?'" he explains. Speed matters enormously. Filing a habeas petition before a detainee gets transferred can lock in a favorable jurisdiction.

Second, stay in compliance, even when it feels dangerous. For people with orders of removal, this means showing up for check-in appointments, even when ICE is arresting people at those same appointments.

"If the immigrants get scared about getting illegally arrested at one of these ICE appointments, which happens all the time, and so they don't go, all of a sudden that failure to abide by the terms of the order presents a legal basis for revoking their order and subjecting them to detention."

Don't let fear drive decision-making. Do what you're supposed to do, even when the government isn't.

Third, don't try to do this alone. Pro se habeas petitions from detention are nearly impossible to execute quickly enough to matter.

"Everything takes like every single filing, you have to add two weeks to the timeline to wait for the mail," Nico explains. At many facilities, court mail simply doesn't get delivered. He has had multiple clients complain that documents never arrived.

Some immigrants can handle the legal arguments themselves. But even they end up calling Nico after five months have passed with no resolution. "It just takes too long to do it pro se," he says.

Minnesota's Federal Bench

As the interview closes, Nico reiterates:

"I'm just really proud of the judges here in Minnesota, the federal bench in particular," he says. "The effort that they have put in since December is something that people need to write books about one day."

While courts in other districts can take two to three months to decide a habeas case, Minnesota judges are moving with urgency. Nico gets orders at 10 p.m. on Sundays. Judges are working seven days a week. Cases that would languish elsewhere are being resolved in two weeks.

"It's disturbing that it's gotten to the place where they have to do that," he admits. "But they deserve a shout-out if anyone's ever willing to give it to them."

This interview is part of LegalBridge Magazine's series featuring leading voices in immigration law.