Federal judges across the country have been grappling for months with ICE’s decision to dramatically expand the number of people the agency locks up in detention facilities while their deportation proceedings are pending. This “mandatory detention” push — an unprecedented reinterpretation of decades-old laws — has resulted in thousands of people, most without criminal records, being detained, even if they have lived in the country for decades without incident.
That has led to a deluge of emergency lawsuits brought by individual detainees, thousands of whom have challenged their detention as illegal and unconstitutional.
