Federal Court Declares Trump Administration's Denial of Bond Hearings to New England ICE Detainees is Unlawful

BOSTON – A federal court today 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 judgment 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.

“We are pleased that the court is vindicating the due process rights of immigrants unlawfully detained in Maine and throughout New England,” said Max Brooks, an immigration attorney with the ACLU of Maine. “The Trump administration upended decades of standard immigration procedures and defied the clear language of federal law by denying bond hearings to people detained on civil immigration charges. Denying people the support of their families, communities, and jobs during their immigration court proceedings, without any chance to seek their freedom, is not only cruel – it’s against the law. Today’s ruling affirms that this administration must follow the law.”

"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 hearings 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 the 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 ruling grants 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 today's ruling here or in the PDF at the bottom of this page. Read more about the case here.