Judge blocks White House, rejects blanket detention of asylum seekers
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday ordered the U.S. government to immediately release or grant hearings to more than 1,000 asylum seekers who have been jailed for months or years without individualized case reviews, dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrants.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of Washington said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ignored its own policy stating that asylum applicants who establish a “credible fear” of persecution in their native country must be granted a court hearing within seven days or released.
He granted a preliminary injunction preventing the government from blanket detentions of asylum seekers at five large U.S. field offices, including those currently held, pending resolution of the lawsuit.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued in March after finding detention rates at the offices surged to 96 percent in the first eight months after President Donald Trump took office in 2017, up from less than 10 percent in 2013.
The ACLU says the mass imprisonment of people seeking refuge while awaiting immigration court hearings stems from policies promoted by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions that amount to a deterrent to using the asylum provision. The policy, the ACLU argued, unlawfully denies asylum seekers as a group based on only one of the factors used to assess the danger an individual poses: how long they have been in the U.S.
“As the events of recent months make clear, the question of how this nation will treat those who come to our shores seeking refuge generates enormous debate,” Boasberg wrote in a 38-page opinion, an allusion to the administration’s family separation policy recently implemented and then abandoned amid international condemnation.
“This Opinion does no more than hold the Government accountable to its own policy, which recently has been honored more in the breach than the observance. Having extended the safeguards of the Parole Directive to asylum seekers, ICE must now ensure that such protections are realized,” Boasberg said.
The lawsuit was filed in behalf of nine detained asylum seekers from Haiti, Venezuela and other countries who were initially determined to have credible stories and have been jailed for months and up to two years awaiting hearings before an immigration judge, lawyers said. Two have been granted asylum and released since the case was filed in March, said attorneys with the ACLU and the Covington & Burling law firm.
The court action named the Department of Homeland Security and its sub-agency ICE, which detains immigrants, and the Justice Department, which runs the immigration courts where immigrants can seek bond hearings.
The five ICE field offices cited in the lawsuit are Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia, which handle about one-fourth of the nationwide caseload. Plaintiffs said the government at an earlier stage identified nearly 800 class members, a figure they said has now exceeded 1,000.
“This ruling means the Trump administration cannot use indefinite detention as a weapon to punish and deter asylum seekers,” said Michael Tan, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.
A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Boasberg cited a 2009 Department of Homeland Security directive still in full force that says the federal government must consider person-by-person whether an undocumented asylum seeker poses a flight risk or danger to the community, or can be released from detention once they have shown a “credible fear” of persecution in their home country.
Boasberg granted provisional class status to asylum seekers. While the lawsuit is ongoing, the judge barred ICE from detaining applicants for more than seven days without doing a personalized review of their asylum claim and giving specific written explanations for anyone the government says must be held.