ACLU of Nevada Files Class Action Lawsuit to Seek Bond Hearings and Ensure Due Process for Detained Immigrants

LAS VEGAS – The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project and UNLV Immigration Clinic, have filed a class action lawsuit in federal court on behalf of two individuals challenging the new mandatory detention policy of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Las Vegas Immigration Court, who are depriving all immigrants who entered without inspection access to a bond hearing, regardless of how long they have lived in the United States.

For decades, individuals detained inside the U.S. by immigration enforcement were entitled to seek release on bond. The new policy, implemented nationwide earlier this year, provides that anyone who entered the U.S. without inspection will be held in mandatory detention with no opportunity for a bond hearing (also known as a “custody redetermination hearing”) while their immigration case moves forward. This change marks a major and unlawful shift in immigration policy.

The lawsuit, Jacobo-Ramirez et al. v. Noem, Case No. 2:25-cv-02136, challenges the policy of applying the mandatory detention provision under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2) to all persons deemed inadmissible because they originally entered the country without inspection. The lawsuit argues that the government’s new policy violates immigration laws and regulations, the Administrative Procedure Act, and due process by subjecting potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of immigrants to detention without any opportunity for review.

ACLU of Nevada executive director Athar Haseebullah said:
“Due process lies at the core of our Constitution. While I recognize there are many within the federal government who would wish to discard the concept of due process and likely the Constitution alongside it, we remain firmly committed to protecting people’s due process rights. The federal government’s approach is harmful to Nevada as a whole and those who continue to defend this lunacy, even as international tourism is down statewide, no longer seem to care about the Constitution and have turned into proponents of federal overreach. As private for-profit immigration detention centers continue to profit from human suffering, we will continue to fight back against the federal government’s attempts to undermine civil liberties. This isn’t immigration policy, it’s cruelty dressed up as bureaucracy and what our Constitution is designed to prevent against. If DHS officials should feel compelled to respond to this statement as they insanely did a couple of months ago when we filed our lawsuit against the DMV for their illegal actions, they are welcome to come debate me before a live audience so the rest of the state can see their false narratives firsthand.”

ACLU of Nevada senior staff attorney Sadmira Ramic said:
“The federal government is now upending decades of its own practice in order to deny immigration bond hearings to people, not because they’re dangerous or a flight risk, but to keep as many people in custody as possible, hoping that prolonged detention will force them to give up on fighting their removal. These cases can take years to resolve, and it is well known that people have a much better chance of asserting their defenses against removal when they’re not locked away from their families and living in terrible conditions. This is another effort by the federal government to pad its deportation numbers, and there is no basis in law for this abrupt change in policy. Every court that has looked at this issue so far, including judges in Nevada, has found that DHS’s misclassification of people in this way violates the law, and we are confident that the same will hold true in our case.”

UNLV Immigration Clinic director Michael Kagan:
“The new ICE detention policies target many longstanding residents of our community, people who work and have raised families in Las Vegas and in neighboring states, and who are then detained in Southern Nevada. Our staff and student attorneys have been encountering countless people who, under the law and under consistent government policy until a few weeks ago, would have been released. We have already taken some cases to court and prevailed, as have other attorneys. Judges all over the country have ordered people released, but usually only when people are able to get an attorney who can go to federal court. We are grateful to partner with the ACLU to seek a systematic solution.”