New ruling on detained immigrants means hundreds in WA could be released
A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling likely means hundreds of immigrants detained in Tacoma’s ICE detention center — and many more throughout eight other western states — will likely get a bond hearing that potentially allows them to be released.
That at least is the belief of Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which brought the class-action suit that led to Thursday’s ruling.
The Trump administration, through Tacoma immigration judges under the direction of the U.S. Department of Justice, defied a lower court’s September order calling for bond hearings. But Adams said the administration, through immigration judges under the direction of the U.S. Department of Justice, has been abiding by appeals court rulings similar to Thursday’s in the 2nd, 6th, 10th and 11th circuits.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency does not comment on judicial decisions.
If 9th Circuit immigration judges follow suit, the longevity of their turnaround depends on how the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in. The administration asked the nation’s highest court to review the issue after the 6th Circuit ruling.
In Thursday’s 9th Circuit ruling, a panel of three judges, with one dissenting, held the administration is incorrectly interpreting a 1996 congressional law laying out which immigrants are subject to mandatory detention. Since July, the administration had maintained immigrants who entered the U.S. without authorization and inspection were “seeking” admission — whether they were apprehended an hour or decades after they crossed the border.
Tacoma’s immigration judges pioneered this interpretation of 1996 immigration law. First assistant U.S. Attorney for Western Washington Neil Floyd, embroiled in a controversy over whether he should continue to run the office without U.S. Senate approval, was then one of the Tacoma immigration judges.
Without the option of bond, immigrants can be detained for days, weeks or even years while their case is pending. People have described irregularly timed meals, unpalatable food and drinking water, uneven access to medical care and the outdoors and, at times, alleged abuse by guards.
The administration’s expansion of detention has led it to look for facilities around the country holding vastly more people.
“If you think about it, it makes sense,” Floyd said in October of the bond denial policy. For those who entered the country illegally, “No one’s ever checked your background or determined whether or not you have authority to be here and whether or not you should be allowed to enter the United States. The fact that you’ve been here for a long time doesn’t change that status legally.”
Appeals courts in the 5th and 8th circuits sided with this point of view.
The 9th Circuit panel, however, said the interpretation contradicts “the ordinary understanding of ‘seeking.'”
The administration’s reasoning also represents a “sharp break from the past” and from “every reliable indicator of congressional, executive and judicial understanding” from the act’s passage until 2025, the Thursday ruling said.
It continued: That no administration has ever felt compelled to detain all immigrants who entered illegally is “strong evidence” such a mandate “does not exist.”
Floyd responded in a statement: “This decision from a divided court along with the division in the other circuits demonstrates that this issue remains unsettled. We look forward to the Supreme Court resolving the issue.”
In the meantime, Adams declared “a major victory” in an email to Northwest Immigrant Rights Project legal staff following the decision, which applies in addition to Washington to California, Oregon, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaiʻi, Idaho, Montana and Nevada.
It should help relieve the flood of “habeas corpus,” or wrongful imprisonment, cases that have hit Western Washington’s U.S. District Court since last year. Detained immigrants have been filing such cases in droves as Tacoma’s immigration judges failed to follow the September decision from U.S. District Judge Tiffany Cartwright.
Frustrated, Cartwright in January required notice of her decision be given to immigrants it applied to in the Tacoma detention center so they could consider filing habeas petitions. She also required the administration to provide the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project with a weekly list of people who would have grounds to do so.
“Lately, that has been about 100 people each week,” Adams said in an email.
Nina Shapiro: 206-464-3303 or nshapiro@seattletimes.com. Nina Shapiro is a reporter at The Seattle Times who covers immigration and other social issues, examining how policies affect people's lives.
