Thousands of non-citizens held by the government for more than a year deserve bond hearings every six months while their deportation cases remain pending, a federal appeals panel in Pasadena ruled Wednesday.
The opinion by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals came after litigation over whether immigrants unable to afford bond or not originally granted bond are entitled to additional bond hearings.
The American Civil Liberties Union in Southern California filed the class-action lawsuit in 2007 on behalf of Mexican immigrant Alejandro Rodriguez, who was detained for several years without a bond hearing.
Wednesday’s ruling affirms and expands an April 2013 decision which upheld an order requiring bond hearings for immigrant detainees locked up six months or longer while they fight their deportation cases.
The ruling stands to benefit thousands of immigration detainees across the Southland and other areas covered by the circuit court, where an estimated 25 percent of immigrant detainees are held every year, according to the ACLU.
“This decision substantially decreases the likelihood people will get lost in the system for years on end because there will be some examination of why the person is still locked away,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and deputy legal director for the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
“It provides them with an elemental component of due process,” he said.
The court also said that immigration judges should consider, among other issues, how long immigrants have been held in detention in deciding whether to release them.
Immigration judges “need not release any individual they find presents a danger to the community or a flight risk after hearing and weighing the evidence,” according to Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, who wrote the appellate opinion.
— Wire reports