A federal judge in California on Wednesday issued a forceful ruling criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration detention approach, ordering steps she said were required to provide detained people with due process and access to attorneys. In the decision, U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes said the government had continued conduct she had previously found unlawful, and she described the administration’s actions in stark terms while citing a series of alleged harms tied to detention.
Sykes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, said her latest ruling extended from an earlier finding that the administration had illegally denied many detained immigrants an opportunity for release. In the Wednesday decision, she ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide notice that certain detained immigrants may be eligible for bond, and to give them access to a phone call to contact an attorney within one hour.
The judge also directed that the administration provide the required access despite its continued posture that mandatory detention should proceed. Sykes said the threats posed by the executive branch could not be viewed in isolation, and she cited the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota as part of what she described as the government’s violence toward immigrants, and she added that she believed the administration had “extended its violence on its own citizens.”
Sykes wrote that the court’s failure to provide due process harms people beyond the individuals directly held in detention, saying it “harms their families, communities, and the fabric of this very nation.” She also criticized the administration’s argument that immigration enforcement was targeting the “worst criminals,” saying that, in her view, most people arrested did not fit that description.
The decision comes after Sykes had previously ruled—first in November and again in December—that the mandatory detention policy violated an act of Congress. She said in the Wednesday order that the administration violated her December ruling by continuing to deny bond hearings, and she said the approach she rejected was nationwide in effect.
In addition, Sykes threw out a September immigration court ruling that the administration had cited to support its policy of continued mandatory detention. The administration, through the White House, referred questions Thursday to Homeland Security, and the department responded that the Supreme Court had “repeatedly overruled” lower courts on mandatory detention.
The Associated Press also reported that some federal judges had taken additional steps beyond individual cases as the administration pursued mandatory detention without bond hearings. In Minnesota, a judge took the rare step Wednesday of holding a Trump administration lawyer in contempt of court over the government’s failure to comply with an order related to returning identification documents to an immigrant the judge had ordered released.
In a separate order described by AP, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey said Tuesday that Trump officials failed to meet court-ordered deadlines for bond hearings in immigration court in 12 of roughly 550 cases since December 5, and he wrote: “Judicial orders should never be violated.”
As the litigation continued, AP reported that federal court records analyzed by the news organization showed more than 20,000 habeas corpus cases filed since Trump’s inauguration by immigrants seeking release. The AP reported that under past administrations, people with no criminal record generally could request a bond hearing before an immigration judge while their cases worked through immigration court unless they were stopped at the border, but that the Trump White House reversed that practice.
Matt Adams, an attorney for plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Sykes, said he was hopeful Wednesday’s ruling would end mandatory detention. He told reporters that, in the normal course of events, “the immigration judges would return to granting bond hearings.”