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A federal judge has accused the Trump administration of terrorizing immigrants and recklessly violating the law in its efforts to deport millions of people.
The judge said that the White House had also “extended its violence on its own citizens”, citing the killings of Renee Good in January by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer and Alex Pretti in the same month by Border Patrol, both US citizens and both protesting in Minneapolis.
“The threats posed by the executive branch cannot be viewed in isolation,” US district judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California, said in a scathing decision.
Sykes said the administration had violated her December ruling that found it was illegally denying many detained immigrants a chance for release, amid record levels of immigrants now in detention after being apprehended by various agencies under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) umbrella.
She ordered DHS to provide detainees with notice that they may be eligible for bond and then give them access to a phone to call an attorney within an hour.
Sykes also threw out a September ruling by an immigration court that the administration had cited for continuing its mandatory detention policy after arresting people on suspicion of being in the US illegally.
The White House referred comment on Thursday to the homeland security department. The department said in a statement that the supreme court had “repeatedly overruled” lower courts on the issue of mandatory detention.
“ICE has the law and the facts on its side, and it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land,” the statement said.
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 US-Mexico border. Donald Trump’s White House reversed that practice.
With access to bond hearings cut off, immigrants by the thousands filed 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 Associated Press. A habeas case typically demands that the authorities justify keeping someone in custody and argues for their release.
Judges have granted many of those petitions, but then later found the administration was violating their orders to release people or provide them with other relief.
A federal judge in Minnesota took the rare step on Wednesday of finding a Trump administration lawyer in contempt of court over the government’s failure to comply with an order to return identification documents to an immigrant the judge had ordered released.
A federal judge in New Jersey this week ordered the administration to explain what procedures are in place to ensure court orders in his district are followed consistently and on time. US district judge Michael Farbiarz said on Tuesday that Trump officials failed to meet court ordered deadlines for bond hearings in immigration court in 12 of roughly 550 cases since 5 December.
“Judicial orders should never be violated,” he wrote.
Sykes ruled in November and again in December that the mandatory detention policy violated an act of Congress. She extended her decision to immigrants nationwide. The Republican administration, however, continued denying bond hearings.
Sykes said on Wednesday that failing to provide immigrants with due process “harms their families, communities, and the fabric of this very nation”.
She also slammed the claim that the administration’s 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.”
Matt Adams, an attorney for plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Sykes, said he was hopeful her latest ruling would do away with mandatory detention.
“Certainly in the normal course of things, the immigration judges would return to granting bond hearings,” he said.
