#Hartford, CT – Attorney General William Tong led a coalition of 18 attorneys general filing a friend of the court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit defending due process rights of immigrant detainees who have been unlawfully denied bond.
The brief supports the petitioners in Pereira Brito v. Barr, who sued the Board of Immigration Appeals to block unlawful bond hearing procedures that have resulted in the indefinite detention of many immigrants with no meaningful legal recourse. A Massachusetts District Court in 2019 found the BIA policy violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act and entered a permanent injunction. The attorneys general urge the appeals court to uphold that decision.
The petitioners represent a class of immigrants in contested removal proceedings who do not have serious criminal histories. While federal law states that each detainee is entitled to an individualized bond hearing before an immigration judge, many have been denied release even though they present no flight risk or threat to the community.
The unlawful Board of Immigration Appeals policy places the burden of proof on the individual detainees to show they are not a risk, rather than requiring the government to show evidence of such risk. With many lacking legal representations, few immigrant detainees are able to successfully overcome this unconstitutional barrier and as a result remain detained indefinitely, separated from their families and employment.
“If the government wants to detain someone and separate them from their family and employment, the government needs clear and convincing evidence that a person is either dangerous or a flight risk. That’s not what is happening in our immigration courts, and that is inflicting permanent trauma on families across Connecticut and nationwide. The district court rightly blocked the BIA’s unconstitutional violation of due process, and the appellate court should uphold the decision,” said Attorney General Tong.
The attorneys general from California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington joined the coalition led by Connecticut and Massachusetts.
This press release was made possible by:
