“The threats posed by the executive branch cannot be viewed in isolation,” U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California said in her scathing decision issued late Wednesday.
Sykes ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide detained immigrants around the country with notice of her earlier decisions that they may be eligible to seek release on bond.
Under past administrations, people with no criminal record could generally request a bond hearing before an immigration judge while their cases wound through immigration court unless they were stopped at the border. President Donald Trump ’s White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention.
Sykes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, ruled in November and again in December that the change violated the law and extended her decision to immigrants nationwide. The Republican administration, however, has continued denying bond hearings. That has prompted thousands of immigrants to file separate petitions in federal court seeking their release. More than 20,000 habeas corpus cases have been filed since Trump’s inauguration, according to federal court records analyzed by the AP.
Sykes said Wednesday by violating her decision, the administration had “wasted valuable time and resources” and deprived immigrants of their “liberty, economic stability, and fundamental dignity.”
She also slammed the claim that the immigration crackdown was removing the worst criminals, saying most of the people arrested did not fit that description.
“Americans have expressed deep concerns over unlawful, wanton acts by the executive branch,” she wrote. “Beyond its terror against noncitizens, the executive branch has extended its violence on its own citizens, killing two American citizens— Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.”