Fomer U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks last year at Louisiana State Penitentiary to announce the opening of Camp 57, a facility at the prison that will house immigrant detainees. An appeals court covering Louisiana and other states with large detention centers is at the center of a court fight over mandatory detention for many immigrants. (Photo by Piper Hutchinson/Louisiana Illuminator)
Seeking to stop a “flood” of court cases freeing immigrants from mandatory detention, the Trump administration is asking an appeals court to put three immigrants back in detention.
The immigrants were freed by Texas federal judges in February and March in a case that was upheld by an appeals court panel for Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, which found that such immigrants have the right to bond hearings within 90 days of being detained. That decision was reversed by the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hold a full hearing on the case in September.
In court papers filed earlier this month, the Trump administration noted the thousands of recent court cases, called habeas petitions, in which judges determined that the mandatory detention policy violates the U.S. constitution. In many cases, those determinations were made even by judges appointed by Trump.
“This flood of habeas petitions has inflicted a devastating toll on U.S. Attorneys’ Offices as well as district courts — draining those Offices’ resources and impeding numerous other significant priorities,” administration attorneys wrote in the filing. The administration asked for a decision by Monday, July 20, that would put the three men back into immigration detention as a precedent for other judges to follow.
Rebecca Cassler, a senior litigation attorney with the American Immigration Council, which represents the three men, told Stateline the men were all pulled over in traffic stops, have no criminal record and have children who are U.S. citizens, and have each lived in the U.S. more than 10 years. They are subject to the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy because they crossed a border illegally.
“This is a highly irregular motion to file at this stage of the case, and it would work tremendous hardship on the clients and their families,” Cassler said.
In immigration detention, the men “experienced rotten food, inadequate medical care, maggot- and fungus-ridden mattresses, and devastating separation from their families,” according to court papers filed Friday by the American Immigration Council.
Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Alabama Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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Author: Tim Henderson