RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A class-action lawsuit was filed on July 28 against the Trump administration by immigrants’ rights advocates, according to a press release from the ACLU of Southern California.
The lawsuit challenges a new policy issued by the Trump administration that effectively ends bond eligibility for detained immigrants.
The policy, enacted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on July 8, eliminates immigrants’ eligibility to seek release on bond, the ACLU stated.
Even if immigrants have lived in the United States for many years—or just one—they will not be able to seek bond, regardless of whether they have a criminal record, the ACLU reported.
“Tens of thousands of immigrants would be jailed indefinitely while their immigration cases are considered for months or years on end,” said the ACLU’s press release.
According to the ACLU, plaintiffs in the lawsuit were “unlawfully” taken into custody at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Southern California and were denied bond consideration by ICE and immigration judges.
The filing amends an existing habeas petition, and the court has ordered that plaintiffs be granted a bond hearing within seven days.
The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Southern California, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and attorneys Niels Frenzen and Jean Reisz, according to the ACLU.
Matt Adams, legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said the current policy clearly violates immigration laws that have been in place for the past 30 years.
He added that immigrants are “entitled to individual custody determinations.”
The ACLU stated that the government’s efforts to ignore and override immigration laws and regulations surrounding an immigrant’s right to request release on bond contradict the constitutional right to due process for all persons in the United States, including documented and undocumented immigrants.
“Denying eligibility to bail for these detainees and depriving them of a hearing to determine whether they are a flight risk or danger to others violates these same rights,” the ACLU said.
Eva Bitrán, director of immigrants’ rights and senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said that “indefinitely detaining people” is blatantly illegal and that this case is an attempt to give detainees a chance to argue whether their detention is lawful.
The ACLU said ICE has taken the position that noncitizens are not eligible for immigration court bond hearings, despite ongoing federal court rulings that both immigration law and the Constitution allow such hearings.
“The Trump Administration seeks to rewrite our Constitutional bedrock, denying millions of immigrants in cruel detention facilities the ability to seek bond,” said Michael Tan, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “With one memo, ICE hopes to keep people away from their families for months—or even years—before their cases are even heard.”
