When a Border Patrol agent arrested a 24-year-old Venezuelan man in Brunswick last month, the officer said he had to detain him under a law that immigration lawyers say has traditionally been used for people after they’ve just crossed the border. But the man has been in Maine for two years and was allowed to work while he seeks asylum, according to court records. Federal agents have been using the law to arrest more immigrants who they say are in the country illegally and seeking admission, which, according to the Department of Justice, means they are not entitled to a bond hearing or conditional release. In several cases recently considered by a federal judge in Maine, immigrants who have been detained say they have lived and worked in the United States for several years. Many have applied for asylum and some have children who are U. S. citizens. Their lawyers have argued that the federal government is ignoring decades of precedent, in which immigration authorities have used a different law to arrest people who have been in the country for years. That law allows detainees to request bond, as long as they’re not found to be dangerous to the community or a flight risk. The man arrested in Brunswick is one of many immigrants challenging their arrests in the U. S. District Court of Maine. The American Civil Liberties Union, including several of its New England chapters, has also filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge in Boston to deem the practice of “systematically misclassifying” immigrant detainees as unconstitutional. ACLU of Maine lawyer Max Brooks said the issue comes down to bond hearings. Brooks, whose clients have included asylum seekers, has filed a handful of petitions seeking the release of people who he says were detained under the wrong law. “It’s extremely difficult to prove your asylum case, to prove the persecution that you suffered, when you’re locked up in a detention facility with very minimal access to the outside world,” Brooks said in an interview Wednesday. Attorneys for the Department of Justice have said the law allows them to detain and deny bond to anyone in the country illegally and that it doesn’t matter if people “have successfully evaded U. S. Border Patrol and effected an unlawful entry into the interior of the United States,” according to their response to the ACLU case in Boston. “The crux of this dispute is one of statutory interpretation,” federal attorneys wrote. “And, under the plain text, the resolution of this case is neither close nor difficult.” The Board of Immigration Appeals, which is overseen by the Department of Justice, upheld the practice in a decision last month. ACLU lawyers say their argument is supported by “decades of settled immigration practice,” as well as several recent decisions from federal judges in Maine and Massachusetts. Last month, Maine U. S. District Judge Stacey Neumann ordered the release of three Ecuadorian men, who she agreed had been detained under the wrong law. During a hearing Tuesday, while considering the case of the Brunswick man arrested by Border Patrol, Neumann told two assistant U. S. attorneys that she was “frustrated” to see them raising the same defense, despite her previous rulings. “The government agency continues to act in a way that the court has said is illegal,” Neumann said during the Zoom hearing. She ordered on Thursday that the federal government give the man a bond hearing. ‘CREATES A LEGAL CONUNDRUM’ The Board of Immigration Appeals was recently asked to consider the case of a Venezuelan man, who was arrested in Washington by immigration officials as someone “seeking admission” and not entitled to bond. While the man admitted to crossing the southern border in 2022 without encountering Border Patrol, he also said he had been living in the United States for almost three years. He was granted temporary protected status in 2024, but that expired a year later. The board said this “creates a legal conundrum,” and that the man “provides no legal authority” to show why people accused of being in the country illegally are eligible for bond hearings “after some undefined period of time residing in the interior of the United States.” “If he is not admitted to the United States (as he admits) but he is not ‘seeking admission’ (as he contends), then what is his legal status?” the board stated. In a Sept. 5 decision, the board agreed that people arrested under the law in question are not entitled to a bond hearing. Brooks, with the ACLU of Maine, described the difficulties immigrants who have been arrested endure while locked up. He said facilities can record calls to friends and family, and can charge detainees for the calls. In Maine, where Border Patrol agents are carrying out many of these arrests, the agency recently has been holding people in small stations. In some petitions filed in Maine’s U. S. District Court, immigration lawyers have said their clients were sleeping on cots on the floor, surrounded by several other detainees while in Border Patrol facilities. “It’s inherently harder to prepare for your case if you’re locked up, can’t see people in person, are stressed out,” Brooks said. Because of a 1st U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision four years ago, it’s easier for immigrant detainees in New England to get approved for bond. Since President Donald Trump took office, immigration advocates say the administration has been transferring more ICE detainees to facilities in the south, to prisons in Texas and Louisiana, where they’re far away from their communities and it’s harder to request bond. CLASS ACTION CASE The ACLU lawyers in the Boston case have asked for class action status, so that anyone who a judge believes is being detained under the wrong law can be released or given a bond hearing. The federal government argued that this kind of process would be illegal and that federal judges can only weigh each case individually. U. S. District Judge Patti B. Saris in Massachusetts was still considering the ACLU’s request on Thursday, according to court records. The ACLU attorneys shared almost 30 petitions with Saris that have been filed this year in Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire. They all involve immigrants who were arrested by Border Patrol and ICE and who said they’re being held under the wrong law and should be eligible for bond. The cases include a 37-year-old Ecuadorian man who was arrested by Border Patrol in Maine on Sept. 10 after being involved in a car accident in Waterville. A police officer called Border Patrol because the man didn’t have identification and wasn’t fluent in English, according to court records. Neumann, the judge in Maine, ordered the federal government on Sept. 30 to release him and give him a bond hearing “for the same reasons as I have enumerated in detail in previous cases.” If the ACLU wins class action status for the lawsuit, Brooks said it could save Maine’s federal court from a surge in individual petitions. While all of the cases in Maine have varied slightly, based on each petitioner’s circumstances and the details of their arrest, Brooks said they all deal with legal misclassification and the denial of bond hearings. “That’s why it makes so much sense to do this as a class action,” Brooks said. “Basically, all of this stuff is flowing from . this broad policy decision to require illegal misclassification, and a court can address that in one fell swoop.”.
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/10/16/aclu-asks-judge-to-find-that-immigrants-who-are-arrested-have-right-to-bond/