Court Cases

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.

The federal government has targeted noncitizen students and faculty by arresting, detaining, and deporting them in retaliation for their pro-Palestinian activism. This is a coordinated attempt to chill their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly.

We filed five administrative claims against the federal government on behalf of people who suffered abuse at the hands of rogue federal immigration agents. The filings are part of a coordinated nationwide effort by the ACLU involving 54 claims across 17 states and Washington, D.C.

As federal agents continue to deploy reckless immigration operations across Maine and the country, the ACLU of Maine is fighting back in court, and helping others do the same.

We’re suing Sanford for refusing to comply with Maine’s Freedom of Access Act. We’re asking the Cumberland County Superior Court to order Sanford to turn over public information about their police department’s cooperation with ICE and CBP – something 112 other Maine agencies have already done.

We sued the Trump administration for issuing an executive order that blatantly violated the plain language of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The ACLU filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 100 students whose F-1 student immigration statuses were unlawfully terminated. We asked the court to reinstate their F-1 student status so they could continue their studies.

We sued the federal government in 2020 for unconstitutional border patrol checkpoints in northern New England. In 2023, Border Patrol agreed to stop operating a problematic checkpoint until January 1, 2025.