Immigration detainees in Southern California are entitled to a bond hearing after being in custody for more than six months, a federal judge has ruled.
A preliminary injunction granting the bond hearings had been in place for the past year. Senior U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. made the order permanent Wednesday and established that the hearings should be provided automatically rather than only at the detainee's request.
"It's a hugely important ruling for immigrants in detention who now have their first opportunity to seek release on bond," said Michael Kaufman, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, which represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. "They have a time period now, something to look forward to — they can ask a judge for release and the ability to return to their families and loved ones."
The decision applies to more than 2,000 detainees in four facilities: Adelanto, James A. Musick, Theo Lacey and the Santa Ana City Jail. On an average day before the lawsuit, 400 to 500 people were in custody for more than six months as they contested their immigration cases, according to Kaufman.
Alejandro Rodriguez, one of the plaintiffs, was in immigration detention for more than three years while fighting his deportation. Two other plaintiffs were detained for more than a year.
Before the preliminary injunction, immigrants who were caught as they entered the country did not receive bond hearings, though some were released through an administrative parole process. Some detainees with criminal records were also held without bond hearings. Immigrants without criminal records who were picked up within U.S. borders did receive hearings.
Similar litigation is under way in other parts of the country, Kaufman said. In the 3rd Circuit, which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, immigrants cannot be detained indefinitely, but they must initiate the bond process themselves through a habeas petition.
In an April 2013 opinion, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals noted that 400 bond hearings had been conducted under the preliminary injunction, with about two-thirds of detainees obtaining release.
Government attorneys have argued that the hearings will strain resources and that detention should be mandatory for criminal detainees. The U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
"This injunction will not flood our streets with fearsome criminals seeking to escape the force of American immigration law," Judge Kim Wardlaw of the 9th Circuit wrote in the April opinion.
Without bond hearings, Wardlaw added, detainees could end up in a "prison-like setting where they might otherwise languish for months or years on end."
cindy.chang@latimes.com
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