Source: https://www.clearinghouse.net/detail.php?id=13027&amp;search=
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 22:18:48+00:00

Document:
On August 1, 2013, immigration detainees filed this lawsuit in the Western District of Washington against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) challenging the government's policy and practice of detaining immigrants in deportation proceedings even when they were released from criminal custody some time earlier. They alleged that this practice violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the plaintiffs' due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. The plaintiffs, represented by attorneys from the ACLU of Washington, the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the firm of Gibbs Houston Pauw, are seeking class certification and injunctive and declaratory relief. In particular, plaintiffs are requesting individualized bond hearings.
The plaintiffs were lawful permanent residents who were convicted of crimes and were released from criminal custody long before they were detained by ICE. When detained by ICE, they were held in mandatory detention. Plaintiffs alleged that ICE has misapplied the mandatory detention statute, 8 U.S.C § 1226(c), to individuals like them who have been living in the United States for years since their release without incident. They argued that the statute only allows mandatory detention for people who are convicted of certain crimes and who are taken into immigration custody at the time they are released from the criminal justice system for such a crime.
On October 7, 2013, the court (Judge Richard A. Jones) terminated the defendants' motion for a scheduling conference and the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and a permanent injunction. The court found that the case could be resolved based on the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction and the defendants' motion to dismiss.
On April 9, 2014, the court entered judgment for the plaintiffs, and the defendants appealed the class certification to the Ninth Circuit. On August 4, 2016, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision of the district court certifying a class of immigrant detainees and declaring their entitlement to bond hearings. The court reasoned that the plain language of 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c), stating that mandatory detention only applies to immigrants detained "when [they are] released" from criminal custody, conveyed a degree of immediacy and therefore applied only to immigrants detained promptly after their release from criminal custody. Khoury v. Asher, 667 Fed. Appx. 966 (9th Cir. 2016).
In reaching its decision, the Ninth Circuit cited to a related case decided the same day and reaching the same conclusion that the government may detain without a bond hearing only those immigrants it takes into immigration custody promptly upon their release from criminal custody. Preap v. Johnson, 831 F.3d 1193 (9th Cir. 2016). The government appealed both decisions and on March 19, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in order to resolve a circuit split on the meaning of 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c). Nielsen v. Preap, 138 S. Ct. 1279 (2018). The case is still ongoing.

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