US judge throws out immigration board’s ruling endorsing Trump mass detention policy
By Nate Raymond
Feb 18 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Wednesday struck down a board decision that upheld the Trump administration’s policy of mandatory detention of thousands of people arrested during its crackdown on immigration.
U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California, vacated the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision after finding that the administration had failed to comply with its earlier ruling that declared unlawful the key policy of denying detainees the chance for bail.
Sykes’ ruling Wednesday in a class-action lawsuit involving immigrants across the country is more sweeping than those of hundreds of other U.S. judges who have argued the policy is illegal and ordered the release of detainees or hold bail hearings.
Sykes, who was appointed by former Democratic President Joe Biden, called the administration’s actions “shameless” and accused it of trying to continue its “campaign of illegal action” by still denying bond hearings despite its earlier decision.
“Pollsters have far exceeded the limits of constitutional behavior,” Sykes wrote.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversee the board, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
University of Southern California Gould School of Law professor Niels Frenzen, who represented the plaintiffs, said Sykes’ decision means the board’s decision can no longer be used by immigration judges to deny bond hearings.
“We hope that DHS and immigration courts will now comply with the court’s orders to hold bond hearings for thousands of detained noncitizens,” he said in a statement.
Federal immigration law provides for mandatory detention for “applicants for admission” to the United States; Their cases are pending in immigration courts and they are not eligible for bond hearings.
Challenging its longstanding interpretation of the law, DHS last year, as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, took the position that noncitizens already residing in the United States, not just those arriving at a port of entry at the border, could qualify as applicants for admission.
The Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the Justice Department, issued a decision in September adopting that interpretation, which led to immigration judges employed nationally by the department granting arrest authority.
Sykes declared the DHS policy illegal in a December decision but did not back down on rescinding the board’s decision.
But he said it was clear more relief was needed after Chief Immigration Judge Teresa Riley issued an order telling her colleagues they were not bound by Sykes’ decision and should continue to abide by the panel’s decision.
These immigration judges are employed by the Department of Justice.
In Wednesday’s decision, Sykes criticized DHS for repeatedly and incorrectly suggesting that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s operations are limited to targeting noncitizen criminals who are the “worst of the worst.”
“Perhaps this statement merely reflects the seriousness and bad faith behavior of the government,” Sykes wrote. “While these press releases contain a hint of the truth, they ignore a larger, scarier truth.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Stephen Coates and Clarence Fernandez)
