A federal court ordered the man released, finding the government had unlawfully jailed him and denied him a bond hearing, a violation of federal law.
A federal court on Monday ordered the federal government to release a Massachusetts man who was unlawfully jailed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Maine. The man was originally arrested for a traffic infraction by the Waterville Police Department, who turned him over to CBP. They held him without any ability to call his family or a lawyer for over a week at the remote CBP facility in Fort Fairfield, Maine. The court found the detention violated his due process and ordered his release until he is given a bond hearing. The ACLU of Maine confirmed the client was released on Monday, September 29.
The case, Petitioner v. Stamper, et. al., was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maine by the ACLU of Maine. This week’s order stems from a habeas petition filed on Thursday, September 18. Within 24 hours of that filing, the court blocked the federal government from transferring the ACLU of Maine’s client out of state and wrote that he was likely to prevail on his claims of unlawful detention.
Before ordering the man’s release this week, the court required the government to explain why it was detaining him. After briefs and arguments from the government and the ACLU of Maine, the court determined that the government had improperly classified the man as being detained under 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.
The court determined he could only have been arrested under 8 U.S.C. § 1226, a more general law that typically allows for the opportunity to request bond. In reaching this decision, the court followed its own reasoning in a September 21 decision in another case, and a July 2 decision issued by another District of Maine judge. The court also concluded that the government had unlawfully “failed to obtain a warrant as required by the statute for detention, 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a),” and therefore “Petitioner may not be detained and must be released."
“The court got this right,” said Max Brooks, an immigration attorney with the ACLU of Maine. “The Trump Administration is illegally arresting hundreds of people without warrants and unlawfully denying them bond hearings. This case also shows why LD 1971, which passed the Maine Legislature and will go into law unless the governor vetoes it, is so important. The only reason our client was disappeared to a remote border facility is because local police investigating a minor car accident in Waterville turned him over to federal immigration agents."
Petitioner’s unlawful detention without an opportunity to seek release is a result of a recent Board of Immigration Appeals decision that systemically misclassifies immigrants as if they are 8 U.S.C. § 1225 border detainees, stripping them of their right to bond hearings.
In addition to Petition v. Stamper, et. al., the ACLU of Maine recently joined the ACLU of Massachusetts and other advocates in filing a class action lawsuit seeking relief for other people in similar situations. That case, Guerrero Orellana v. Moriz, et. al., was filed on September 22 in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Rulings from that case would affect people under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Immigration Court, which has jurisdiction over Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island.
