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There's a class action lawsuit that's set to be filed this week. It's challenging a new Trump administration policy that forces immigrants without legal status to remain locked up in ICE custody. Now, in a reversal of a long-standing practice, if someone who's been living in the U.S., even for decades, is detained by ICE, they're no longer eligible for bail. NPR's Tovia Smith has this report on the policy and the pushback.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: For nearly three decades, immigrants in the U.S. illegally who had long-term ties to the community could be released on bail while they fought their deportation. But earlier this month, the administration announced a new interpretation of the law that makes them ineligible for release. They have to stay in detention for what could be months or years while their cases wind through the courts. As ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons recently explained to Fox News, the change is meant to close loopholes.
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TODD LYONS: And we saw so many people that were apprehended illegally coming through the border and then using the bond system just to go ahead and be released out into the community, to have a court date in, you know, 2037, 2035, and never show up for court.
SMITH: But immigration advocates say the new policy is already causing immense suffering, and they're suing to stop it.
MATT ADAMS: The law is clear here. What the government has done is they've manipulated the plain language of the immigration statutes.
SMITH: Attorney Matt Adams with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project is filing the class action lawsuit this week, and he's had a good head start on it. He had already filed a similar suit in Washington state after immigration judges there had been denying bail on a similar legal theory for several years. Adams says the result has been, quote, "catastrophic," and he hopes to prevent the same harm from expanding nationwide.
ADAMS: What the administration is now saying - no, it doesn't matter if they don't have a criminal history. It doesn't matter if they have family or are U.S. citizens. They're saying, look, we're going to take the most draconian measures we can to detain as many individuals as we can throughout these lengthy proceedings.
SMITH: Immigration judges fall under the executive branch and have been under increasing pressure to toe the line on the Trump administration's hard-line immigration stance. Lawyers say they're so far largely complying with the administration's wishes. It's leaving lawyers across the nation blindsided, as what used to be easy bond requests are now being categorically denied.
NICO THOMPSON-LLERAS: I was absolutely shocked. It's like they had flipped their understanding of the statute on its head, and it was almost like a sleight-of-hand trick.
SMITH: Nico Thompson-Lleras, defense attorney with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, says one of his clients, who he didn't want named for fear of reprisals, would have been a shoo-in for release in the past. He says his client is a father of four U.S. citizens who's been working and paying taxes for decades with no criminal record and is not a flight risk. He went to immigration court in California with 85 pages of evidence to prove it, but never got the chance.
THOMPSON-LLERAS: The government laid out this argument that we had never heard before. And before we knew it, bond was denied. And we sort of walked out in a daze.
SMITH: Thompson-Lleras is now arguing that his client was unlawfully detained and denied his due process, and he's filing a habeas corpus challenge in federal court.
THOMPSON-LLERAS: It's, like, going over the head of the immigration courts, basically. We're trying everything that we can do. I mean, any conceivable strategy.
SMITH: His is one of a growing number of similar challenges around the nation.
ANDREW ARTHUR: I'm not sure how that's going to work, but I guess they can try and do it.
SMITH: Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur is now with the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors sharply reducing immigration. He says legal challenges will ultimately land at the U.S. Supreme Court, where he hopes the administration will prevail.
ARTHUR: So if Congress wants to change the law, Congress has the authority to change the law. But the reason for the law is to ensure that those individuals show up for immigration court. It's safer for the community, it's safer for the foreign national and it's safer for the agents and cheaper.
SMITH: But already, many in detention are finding they cannot wait.
ALFREDO JUAREZ ZEFERINO: It's really bad and unbearable just to stay there more.
SMITH: Twenty-five-year-old Alfredo Juarez Zeferino was picked up four months ago, denied bail and held in ICE detention in Tacoma, where he says it's crowded, with frequent fights, missed meals and undercooked food. Last week, after 17 years in the U.S., he decided to give up his case and go back to Mexico, which he believes is exactly the government's goal.
JUAREZ ZEFERINO: I truly do think that they want to make it as hard as they can to make everybody get out, make it more difficult so people just leave.
SMITH: DHS did not respond to requests for comment on that, but self-deportation is something they've been pushing while at the same time threatening prosecution and penalties for those who stay.
Tovia Smith, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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