Class Action Lawsuit Challenges Denial of Due Process in Immigration Courts

The ACLU of Massachusetts, in collaboration with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU of New Hampshire, the ACLU of Maine, Araujo and Fisher law firm, Foley Hoag law firm, and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic, lodged a collective lawsuit in federal court yesterday to oppose the broad denial of bond hearings for individuals detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The filed complaint contends that this denial infringes upon statutory and constitutional rights, disrupting established legal norms and customs in immigration proceedings, thereby depriving thousands of individuals in Massachusetts of due process.
The complaint claims that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice recently initiated the flawed practice of misclassifying individuals arrested by ICE within the United States. These government agencies now systematically reclassify these individuals from the authority of 8 U.S.C. § 1226 – that generally allows for the request of bond during removal proceedings – to the no-bond detention provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1225, which is not applicable to individuals apprehended within the U.S. and entered into removal proceedings.
In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which set the current detention protocol for individuals detained for civil immigration offenses. Since then, individuals arrested within the U.S. and placed in removal proceedings have been subject to 8 U.S.C. § 1226, granting them the right to a bond hearing unless they fall under specific criminal and national security exemptions.
In a regrettable turn of events, the Immigration Court in Tacoma, Washington, started mislabeling § 1226 detainees apprehended within the U.S. as mandatory detainees under § 1225 merely because they entered the country without permission. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington deemed this practice possibly unlawful in April 2025, mandating a bond hearing for an unjustly detained litigant.
Despite this ruling, three months later, the Department of Homeland Security adopted the illegitimate practice nationwide and instructed immigration judges to reject bond hearings. While several immigration judges dismissed this directive, on September 5th, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedent-setting judgment purportedly mandating all immigration judges to misclassify individuals in this manner. Despite subsequent federal court decisions refuting the BIA’s ruling, DHS and DOJ persist in misclassifying individuals and wrongfully denying bond hearings.
The ongoing refusal of ICE to provide bond hearings for detained individuals is a blatant violation of due process and a significant departure from nearly 30 years of established practice. Those affected by this policy are not faceless entities but neighbors, friends, and family members deeply enmeshed in American communities. Currently, the sole recourse is to file individual habeas petitions for each detained individual, prolonging their incarceration and straining court resources. The ACLU stands in alliance to safeguard the due process rights of these individuals through the legal challenge presented today.