Federal Judge Orders DHS To Provide Hearings For Detained Immigrants 

Saying that the Trump administration’s immigration campaign has largely ignored the boundaries of legality is an understatement. A California judge is clearly tired of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) flouting the law, as she issued an order on Wednesday demanding DHS notify the thousands of immigrants in detention that they can either join a lawsuit against the government to receive a hearing or be immediately released. 

According to the New York Times, Judge Sunshine S. Sykes of the Federal District Court for the Central District of California, a Biden appointee, did not mince words in her order against DHS. At various points in her 22-page order, she accused the federal government of enacting “terror against noncitizens,” committing “unlawful, wanton acts,” and “violence on its own citizens” in the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. 

Sykes previously ruled in December that DHS’s practice of holding detainees without bond was illegal. Sykes’s ruling was only one of, get this, 4,4000 court rulings that have found ICE is unlawfully detaining people. 

The DHS took its normal, adversarial position in a statement addressing the ruling that criticized “judicial activists.” The statement added that ICE “has the law and the facts on its side” and that “it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land.”

It’s incredibly gross that DHS is basically saying they can do whatever they want because they own the Supreme Court. They are, in essence, doubling down on the kind of behavior that Sykes called “shameless” in her ruling. 

“Somehow, even after the judicial declaration of law that the Department of Homeland Security was misguided in its act of legal interpretation,” Sykes wrote, but government officials “still insist they can continue their campaign of illegal action.”

From the New York Times:

The legal question of whether the detentions are justified turns on whether detainees already inside the United States can be held without bond under a statute that authorizes such detention for “applicants for admission.” But even if that statute does apply, some detainees’ lawyers have argued, they may still be entitled to a hearing under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Some district court judges and one divided appellate panel from the conservative Fifth Circuit have agreed the administration’s actions were legal.

Judge Sykes is among the dozens of federal judges who have ruled against the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law. In December, she issued a broad ruling that the Homeland Security Department’s arrest policy for migrants was illegal. That order was especially significant because she also certified a nationwide class of potential beneficiaries for her ruling: most anyone without a criminal record who had entered the United States illegally and was not immediately detained at the border.

Under the Trump administration, the federal government has taken a harsh 180 with the way it treats undocumented detainees. Under prior administrations, the general policy has been to release undocumented immigrants who’ve been here for years and have no criminal record out on bond. ICE has a policy that allows detainees to receive supervised release for special circumstances, such as the death of a family member. Yet ICE refused to let Maher Tarabishi see his son before he died or even attend his funeral. 

It’s stuff like this that makes me understand why that kid punched the dude who was walking around saying he supports ICE. There is a distinct lack of humanity in the way ICE is conducting its operations under the Trump administration. From denying undocumented people their basic rights, allegedly brutalizing detainees, to straight-up killing two American citizens for the criminal act of exercising their First Amendment right, ICE gleefully represents everything wrong at America’s core. 

I’d love to believe that Sykes’ order is going to hamper DHS’s ability to terrorize the country, but considering how they’ve ignored previous court orders, I don’t have much hope. 

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Trump Immigration Ploy Is A Return To Racial Control Policies