20 Comments
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Tthiking's avatar

whoa infuriating and scary. not an attorney but do not need to be to know how bad this is. i really appreciate your keeping us updated. i had seen a Wash Post alert but had not read it. looks like we should share this post and the article everywhere we can. i'll post a gift link to article.

edit to add wash post article - gift link: https://wapo.st/4lw55xK

and i hope the walk outside helps

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Amie's avatar

Thank you for breaking this down for us. It's hard to know what's important and what's not and your insights are really valuable.

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Tina Shull's avatar

Thank you for this absolutely alarming and enraging update. Solidarity and we WILL wage a unified response!

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Andrea Adum's avatar

What are they doing? Gosh! It never ends. Thanks for sharing this. Please continue updating us as you come up with strategy. Will share anything I figure out.

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Paige Britton's avatar

Thanks Matt for the heads up. I have my first ever bond hearing (Elizabeth, NJ for PA detainee) on Tuesday. Looks like I need to learn a whole new script.

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Matt Cameron's avatar

good luck! We're hearing different results from different judges around the country and I would hope that you would have a better chance in NJ in TX than I did in TX. But if things go the way I am very concerned they will with all of this post-CASA I don't think bond is going to be a viable option in the parts of the country where the most people are detained

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Paige Britton's avatar

NJ (Elizabeth & Newark) seems to be caving. I only heard of one IJ so far who has pushed back. We'll see how long he lasts (hopefully past Tuesday, because he's my IJ!).

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Paige Britton's avatar

Oh, and here's an interesting take -- this IJ was reportedly on board with DHS on Tuesday, but by today he'd done some thinking! ... IJ Bailey asked the ACC why would congress pass laws such as Laken-Riley that carves out a specific group of EWI’s for mandatory detention, when they could have said all EWI’s are mandatory detention, and why would the BIA do the same with Matter of Q-Li.

ACC did not have a response and Bailey said he has jurisdiction and granted bond for $4500, and Government reserved appeal.

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Matt Cameron's avatar

Nice! I have been making exactly the same point about laken riley--even beyond the obvious text of the law it says a lot about congress's original intent (which i really never would have thought was in question on this point) that they wrote it the way they did. We just have to keep pushing this forward and seeing which judges we can count on to follow the law as written

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Paige Britton's avatar

Hey! Update from today: DHS tried to disqualify my utterly EWI (no immigration contact) client, I pushed back with the above argument about Congress's intent, IJ agreed with me and set a $7000 bond. DHS reserved appeal, tho, so I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow...

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Matt Cameron's avatar

great! I've been hearing more and more about good IJs doing the right thing on this. I wouldn't assume they will *not* file notice of appeal but fingers crossed for you and your client

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Katie Herrmann's avatar

Due process really is the whole ball game, isn't it.

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Katie Herrmann's avatar

Also, asking the Judge for written findings is some πŸ‘‘ shit

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Kaetrin's avatar

Sadly we do this in Australia right now and have done for years. It's disgusting. All immigrants who arrive undocumented, whether they're asylum seekers or not, are immediately put into detention. Mostly here, the detention is offshore. Our system is horribe. Both major parties here support it. Sadly I think Trump got the idea from us. It's shameful.

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Matt Cameron's avatar

i mean at least presumably at some point a law was actually passed which made things that way. We just kind of... did It apparently

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Ian P's avatar

First they came for the migrants...

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GretchenKoch's avatar

I'm doing some data analysis on DHS data and found that according to TRAC, the number of bond hearings for June of 2025 was the highest it's been since 2000, by a considerable margin: https://tracreports.org/phptools/immigration/bond/

I don't know how to interpret that, though, unless Stephen Miller saw those stats and had a catastrophic meltdown at Todd Lyons, "inspiring" Lyons to write that memo....which doesn't actually seem like that much of a stretch at this point.

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GretchenKoch's avatar

Hey Matt, would there be any benefit in submitting a FOIA request for that β€œsecret memo”? Or should I just let the ACLU take care of that?

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Alan Hartley's avatar

I just wanted to give a vote in favor of the long words. I appreciate the information

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