A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Friday that some immigrants who have been detained across New England have a right to a bond hearing.
The ruling comes several months after a handful of civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, alleging the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has unlawfully denied bond hearings to countless immigrants arrested this year.
The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris will affect many immigrants who have been detained in Maine and other New England states, which all use an immigration court in Massachusetts.
Saris did not state how many immigrants could be impacted by her order. The ACLU of Maine estimated on Friday that it could be “potentially thousands” of people.
The order applies to immigrants who were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol and who have not recently arrived in the country. It does not apply to immigrants who have been convicted or charged with certain violent offenses or who have already been ordered to be removed from the country.
In the lawsuit, civil rights advocates argued that DHS has been misclassifying immigrants and arresting them under the wrong set of laws.
The federal government has increased its immigration arrests by using a law that has historically been reserved for immigrants who have recently arrived in the country. That law allows the government to hold them without giving them a bond hearing.
Federal judges in Maine have issued similar rulings in individual cases, in which immigrants have argued they were detained and denied bond under the wrong law. In those cases, the detained immigrants said they had been living in the country continuously for more than two years.
Saris has given the federal government two weeks to notify all detainees in its custody of her order. The judge has also required that the federal government provide each impacted detainee with a phone to call an attorney.
