By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Jan 16 (Reuters) – The top U.S. immigration judge has told her colleagues that they are not bound by a federal court ruling that declared the Trump administration cannot place thousands of people in mandatory detention without an opportunity to be released on bond.
That directive came in an email Chief Immigration Judge Teresa Riley sent her colleagues on Tuesday that the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts attached to a filing on Friday in Boston federal court in a lawsuit challenging the administration’s policy of denying bond hearings.
The ACLU said the email was evidence that “the government has deliberately and systematically instructed every Immigration Judge in the country not to comply with final declaratory judgments.”
The civil rights group said the statement directs judges to disregard court rulings by U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California, and U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Boston in separate class action lawsuits brought on behalf of people who were already living in the United States when they were detained. Both judges held that denying people bond hearings was unlawful.
“We have asked for a status conference to update the court on this troubling development — which significantly impacts the rights of our class members — and anticipate seeking additional relief to protect the class,” Dan McFadden, managing attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement.
At the ACLU’s request, Saris scheduled a Tuesday hearing.
The Justice Department, which oversees the immigration courts, did not respond to a request for comment.
Immigration judges are not part of the federal judiciary but are instead employees of the Justice Department, which is part of the Trump administration.
Under federal immigration law, “applicants for admission” to the United States are subject to mandatory detention while their cases proceed in immigration courts.
Bucking a longstanding interpretation of the law, the Trump administration in July said non-citizens already residing in the United States, and not only those who arrive at a port of entry at the border, qualify as applicants for admission.
The Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department, issued a decision in September that adopted the administration’s interpretation.
But Sykes, whose case is a nationwide class action, in a ruling in December said that the administration’s interpretation was contrary to law and that, as a result, the board’s ruling was “no longer controlling.”
Yet Riley in Tuesday’s email told her colleagues that because Sykes did not issue an injunction, the board’s decision “remains binding precedent on agency adjudicators.”
Lawyers with the ACLU said that prior to that email, the immigration court in Massachusetts had begun holding bond hearings again, consistent with Saris’ decision.
Yet the lawyers said they received multiple reports on Thursday that an immigration judge was denying detainee requests for bond hearings.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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