President Donald Trump claimed that he would be deporting undocumented criminals, but according to a growing list of judges, that isn't what's happening, and they say the moves to detain citizens and legal residents are illegal. Overnight, four more judges added to a growing list of those calling the administration's actions unlawful.
Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney cited four adjudicated cases in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was given a bond hearing rather than being thrown into one of the government holding camps.
In Iowa, one woman who has been in the U.S. for 20 years accidentally backed her car into an ICE vehicle, and agents arrested her, placing her in detention. Judge Leonard T. Strand ordered that she be given a bond hearing.
One man, also with no criminal record, who has lived in the U.S. for 32 years, was nabbed by ICE outside of his home. He too was being held without a bond hearing. An immigration judge claimed that as a non-citizen, he wasn't entitled to one, which a U.S. District Court judge found to be illegal.
A second man, who has a driving infraction and a DUI, was also told he wouldn't get a bond hearing. However, District Court Judge Richard Franklin Boulware II, in Nevada, ruled against ICE, stating that the man should be given a bond hearing instead of being detained.
The judge said that he should be given the hearing, "in part because of some extreme factors in his case," wrote Cheney.
There is man in Iowa, who has been in the U.S. for more than two decades, and "until recently, he had no criminal history," the court filing said. The judge in that case sentenced him to "time served."
But at some point while he was in the Polk County jail, ICE " lodged a detainer against him." After being sentenced to time served, ICE took "custody" of him, but he's remained in the county jail. So, Judge Stephen H. Locher said that he, too, deserved a bond hearing from the immigration judge instead of mandatory detention.
These were just four cases in the past 12 hours, adding to dozens before, in which judges say that ICE holding people in the detention facilities, without a bond hearing, is unlawful.