In a fiery ruling that accused the government of widespread noncompliance with judicial orders, a federal judge ordered the Homeland Security Department to provide thousands of immigrants detained nationwide with notice that they can join a lawsuit against the government and get either a hearing or be immediately released.
If put in place, the 22-page order issued on Wednesday from Judge Sunshine S. Sykes of the Federal District Court for the Central District of California would create a major procedural roadblock for the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort.
The order comes as district court judges across the country whose dockets are swamped with petitions from immigrants challenging their detention have been increasingly muscular in their response to the executive branch disregarding their orders, compiling lists of violations and in one instance holding a Justice Department lawyer in civil contempt of court.
Judge Sykes, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., criticized the executive branch in strong terms, referring to its “terror against noncitizens,” “unlawful, wanton acts,” and “violence on its own citizens” in killing two Minnesota residents.
A Homeland Security Department spokesman responded to the ruling by criticizing “judicial activists.” In a statement, the spokesman said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement “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.”
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment.
The government has indicated it plans to appeal Judge Sykes’s rulings. In court, Justice Department lawyers have said that their lapses are unintentional as they struggle to keep up with an overwhelming caseload.
The Trump administration has been arresting and detaining immigrants who have settled in the United States after entering the country illegally, a break with the longstanding practice of releasing many on bond. As a result, the federal district courts have been flooded with petitions from detained immigrants who are challenging the legality of the new approach.
In her opinion, Judge Sykes dismissed excuses that government lawyers were overwhelmed, noting the flood of work was ultimately driven by the administration’s policies. Officials “have chosen to avail themselves of these exact circumstances of which they now complain,” she wrote.
The administration has been repeatedly sued over its practice of holding migrants who have lived for years in the United States without bond.
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.
After her ruling, the administration’s chief immigration judge, Teresa L. Riley, issued internal guidance for immigration judges, who are part of the Justice Department. She said that they could continue to order migrants to be detained without bond, relying on a September ruling by a different government group, the Board of Immigration Appeals, that justified the detentions.
In her ruling, Judge Sykes wrote that administration officials were “shameless” to argue that they were not bound by her earlier ruling. She declared she was vacating the Board of Immigration Appeals ruling, rendering it void, charging that the government had “far crossed the boundaries of constitutional conduct.”
“Somehow, even after the judicial declaration of law that the Department of Homeland Security was misguided in its act of legal interpretation,” she wrote, government officials “still insist they can continue their campaign of illegal action.”
Judge Sykes ordered the Homeland Security Department to change its website to let detainees know that they could potentially benefit from her class-action ruling. Within seven days, she wrote, the government must give notices of potential class membership to “all noncitizens already in immigration detention,” presented “in a language the noncitizen understands,” an order that would require providing notice to tens of thousands of detained migrants.
She wrote that the government must provide “access to a telephone to call an attorney within one hour” of receiving the notice.
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