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Plaintiffs represented by ACLU-MA, the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, ACLU-NH, ACLU-ME, Araujo and Fisher, Foley Hoag, and Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic
This press release was originally published by the ACLU of
Massachusetts and has been republished with permission.
A federal court recently ruled that the Trump administration is
unlawfully denying bond hearings to potentially thousands of people
in New England who were arrested and detained by ICE and deprived
of the opportunity to challenge their ongoing detention. The court
granted a motion for partial summary judgement and declared that it
was unlawful for the government to deny bond hearings to class
members.
The class action lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, the ACLU of New Hampshire, the ACLU of Maine, the law firm Araujo and Fisher, the law firm Foley Hoag, and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic.
"Everyone in the United States is entitled to due process," said Daniel McFadden, managing attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts. "The government cannot arrest and detain people inside the United States without providing them with strong procedural protections, including a hearing before a judge. But a few months ago, the Trump administration broke the law and reversed the government's longstanding practice of providing bond hearings to people arrested on civil immigration charges. This reversal deprived countless people of the right to challenge their detention in immigration court. Federal courts around the country have almost universally rejected the Trump administration's unlawful action. We are grateful that the federal court in Massachusetts has now restored due process rights to thousands of people arrested and detained throughout New England."
As the lawsuit argued and this ruling affirms, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice abruptly began to misclassify people arrested by ICE inside the United States earlier this year. These people may generally be detained, if at all, under the statutory authority of 8 U.S.C. § 1226, which usually allows for the opportunity to request bond during removal proceedings. However, starting in July, the Trump administration began misclassifying many of these people and placing them in no-bond detention under the provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1225. The court ruled that the government's action violated the law, restoring access to bond hearings for a class of people arrested and detained throughout New England.
"When the administration began routinely denying bond hearing to members of our class, it upended 30 years of standard practice and signaled a dark new strategy designed to demoralize our clients and close off well-established avenues for legal relief," said Annelise Araujo, founding principal and owner at Araujo & Fisher LLP. "We're pleased the court recognized the essential injustice at the heart of this matter. This ruling restores hope for thousands of immigrants.
The original complaint was filed in September on behalf of named plaintiff, Jose Arnulfo Guerrero Orellana, and a class of similarly situated individuals. In October, the court granted a preliminary injunction and ordered a bond hearing for Mr. Guerrero Orellana, who was later released on bond. Later that month, the court certified a class of individuals arrested by ICE inside the United States and held in New England detention facilities. Today's rulinggrants relief to that class and holds that the Trump administration does not have the statutory authority to detain class members without access to a bond hearing.
This ruling for the New England regional class is consistent with a ruling issued yesterday in Maldonado Bautista v. Santacruz, in which a District Court in California declared that the government's policy of subjecting a nationwide class to no-bond detention violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, and vacated that DHS policy.
Read the ruling here.
The Foley Hoag team includes Anthony Mirenda, Christopher Hart, Hampton Dellinger, Gilleun Kang, Spenser Angel, Daniel Zaleznik, Joshua Nacht and Judy Gallant.
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