More immigrants, held in detention for long periods by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, have been going to the courts to be released from custody, even as they wait to hear whether they will be allowed to legally remain in the US.
As many as 763 civil immigration lawsuits have been filed in nationwide disputes, since the end of March this year, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, the non-partisan, non-profit, Syracuse University data research center. The group says that almost all the new lawsuits filed by immigrants want the courts to redress either action or inaction by the federal government. Almost half wanted release from detention, or to have a court order preventing deportation. Government inaction is challenged by most of the other lawsuits.
Over one-in-ten of the new lawsuits was filed in the state of New Jersey, with most detainees wanting release from detention. Immigrants fighting deportation cannot be detained for unreasonable lengths of time without being granted a bail hearing, under a federal appeals court ruling from 2011. The court never specified the nature of ‘unreasonable’.
The ruling has been interpreted to mean that those being held while waiting for a bond hearing can file a federal court petition alleging they have been held for an unreasonable period by judges, according to Lori Nessel, director of the Center for Social Justice of the Seton Hall University School of Law.