Guerrero Orellana v. Moniz – Denial of Bond Hearings

The Trump administration upended decades of standard immigration procedures and defied the plain language of federal law by denying bond hearings to people jailed on civil immigration charges.

In September 2025, the ACLU of Maine and several partners filed a class action lawsuit challenging this unlawful and cruel policy. The government cannot indefinitely jail people without providing them with a hearing before a judge.

In 2025, the federal government abandoned its 29-year understanding of a 1996 law and announced that millions of noncitizens living in the United States would have no opportunity to ask for release on bond if detained by ICE. This new guidance defies decades of government practices, federal law, and fundamental due-process protections. Denying people the chance to seek freedom during immigration proceedings and separating them from their families, communities, and jobs is not only cruel – it’s against federal law. The administration's policy also exacerbates longstanding problems with immigration detention, including overcrowding, medical neglect, inadequate nutrition, and more.

Our lawsuit alleges that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice abruptly began to misclassify people arrested by ICE inside the United States. DHS and DOJ started systematically reclassifying these people from the statutory authority of 8 U.S.C. § 1226, which usually allows for the opportunity to request bond during removal proceedings, to the no-bond detention provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1225, which does not apply to people arrested in the interior of the United States and placed in removal proceedings.

This case was brought on behalf of Jose Arnulfo Guerrero Orellana and a putative class of similarly situated individuals. Mr. Guerrero Orellana has been living in the United States for over a decade. He brings this case to vindicate his own right to a bond hearing — where an immigration judge can determine whether his detention is justified to protect the community or ensure his appearance in court — and that of thousands of other detainees in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire who would be denied the opportunity to seek release on bond under the Trump administration's new and unlawful policy, which violates constitutional and statutory due process rights as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.

On December 19, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the Trump administration was unlawfully denying bond hearings to potentially thousands of people in New England who were arrested and detained by ICE when it upended decades of standard immigration procedures and violated the clear language of federal law.

As revealed in subsequent court filings, the government’s chief immigration judge later instructed her colleagues to ignore declarations like the one entered in this case. Immigration judges continue to systematically deny bond hearings to people arrested within the United States by ICE who allegedly entered without inspection, no matter how long the person has been in the country.

In January 2026, the government appealed the district court's classwide order to the First Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the district court's ruling finding the Trump administration's mandatory detention policy unlawful. The court joined seven other appeals courts and hundreds of district court judges that reached a similar conclusion.

The government’s cruel mandatory detention policy stripped people of the chance to seek their freedom while indefinitely separating them from their loved ones, communities, and jobs. The court's order is clear: no administration is above the law. The government cannot arrest and detain people indefinitely without providing them with a hearing in front of a judge.