DETROIT – The ACLU of Michigan (ACLU) applauds a federal judge’s trio of decisions ordering U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to either immediately release 10 immigrants who are being illegally detained without due process, or provide them a bond hearing before an immigration court judge within seven days to seek release. The rulings, issued late Friday, include ACLU client Jose Contreras-Cervantes, a longtime Michigan resident with leukemia, who has three U.S.-citizen children, and who has been detained since early August. Also included in the judge’s October 17 orders were seven other ACLU clients, and two people represented by private immigration counsel.
At issue is a recent Trump administration directive that unconstitutionally denies otherwise eligible noncitizens their right to a bond hearing and the chance to be released from detention while their immigration cases proceed.
Like the others affected by this ruling, Mr. Contreras-Cervantes, whose leukemia treatment has been dangerously disrupted while in detention, will now have the chance to return home to his U.S.-citizen wife and three children. The family recently marked three birthdays — Mr. Contreras-Cervantes', his wife’s, and one of their children’s — without him, turning what should have been joyful celebrations into painful reminders of their separation.
In its filing with the court, the ACLU asserted that Mr. Contreras-Cervantes and our other clients were unlawfully being denied their right to a bond hearing because of a new directive issued by the Trump administration in July. Despite a law providing for immigration court bond hearings, the directive attempts to reverse decades of government policy and practice. Left unchallenged, implementation of that directive threatens to put potentially millions of noncitizens across the country in mandatory immigration detention with no access to judicial review.
In her rulings, U.S. District Judge Brandy R. McMillion agreed with our position that people like Mr. Contreras-Cervantes, who have long lived in the U.S. are eligible for release from immigration detention while they pursue their immigration cases; and that the government’s new directive not only violates immigration law, but is unconstitutional.
In August, the court ordered that another noncitizen represented by the ACLU, Juan Manuel Lopez-Campos – a longtime Detroit resident and father of five U.S. citizen children – be immediately released or provided a bond hearing to explain to an immigration judge why he is entitled to be released from detention while his immigration case proceeds. The government responded by releasing Mr. Lopez-Campos a few days later.
That ruling, along with Judge McMillion’s decisions in the three new cases and another similar decision in the Eastern District of Michigan by Judge Robert White, reflect decisions federal judges around the country are issuing. In dozens of cases, noncitizens have won the right to appear at a bond hearing before an immigration court judge and seek release.
In her decision, Judge McMillion noted that the Immigration and Nationality Act recognizes that the “most elemental of liberty interests is to be free from restraint and physical detention. For centuries, the Government has acted in accordance with these principles. The recent shift to use the mandatory detention framework…is not only wrong but also fundamentally unfair. In a nation of laws vetted and implemented by Congress, we don’t get to arbitrarily choose which laws we feel like following when they best suit our interests.”
Miriam Aukerman, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan, said this about the ruling:
“In Michigan and across the country, court after court is saying that what the Trump administration is doing is illegal. This decision is the latest among dozens of cases where federal judges have ruled that ICE cannot hold people without bond hearings. Yet, ICE hasn’t stopped. It’s continuing to lock people up without any due process regardless of whether they’ve lived here for decades, regardless of whether they have families and children who need them, and regardless of how deeply rooted they are in their community. Well, if ICE isn’t stopping, we’re not stopping either. What Jose’s family has gone through is unbearable. But it is also commonplace. This administration is tearing families apart and locking people up for no reason every single day. We aren’t going to let that happen. Not to Jose’s family. And not to the hundreds and hundreds of other families who face separation under this new directive.”
Lupita Contreras-Cervantes, wife of Jose Contreras-Cervantes, said this about the ruling:
“This ruling provides incredible relief for me and my family. The stress created by the threats to Jose’s health because of the disruption of his treatment for a rare, life-threatening form of leukemia has been constant. Worst of all is watching my children suffer with the heartbreak and anxiety of being separated from the father they dearly love. We even had to celebrate Jose’s birthday without him—along with my son’s birthday and my birthday this past weekend—moments that should have been joyful, but instead reminded us of how much we’ve lost while he’s been detained. We can’t wait to hold him in our arms again. We are immensely grateful to the judge whose ruling brought hope back into our lives – hope not just for my husband and our family, but for all the other immigrants being illegally detained and separated from their families.”
Read the opinion here.
Read the petition here.
###