The San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA) strongly condemned the Trump administration’s policy changes that strip millions of immigrants, including Caribbean nationals, of their right to bond hearings and facilitate mass arrests during immigration court proceedings.

“These actions undermine the rule of law, violate constitutional protections, and erode the integrity of the judicial system,” HBA Executive Director and Co-Founder Guerline Jozef told Caribbean Life on Aug. 14, noting that this policy applies retroactively to Caribbean and other immigrants who entered the US unlawfully, regardless of their duration of residence or ties to the community.

Jozef said the directive mandates that such individuals remain in detention throughout their removal proceedings, with exceptions granted solely at the discretion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, not judges.

A class-action lawsuit filed by 12 immigrants and their legal advocates alleges that the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security coordinated to arrest and deport immigrants during their court hearings.

The lawsuit asserts that these actions violated due process rights under US law and the Fifth Amendment, pushing vulnerable individuals into expedited removal without due hearings.

“This policy, which denies bond hearings to undocumented immigrants is a blatant violation of the fundamental principles of justice and due process,” Jozef said. “By stripping individuals of their right to a fair hearing before a judge, the administration undermines the core of our legal system and subjects vulnerable people to indefinite detention. … We remain steadfast in our commitment to uphold the rule of law, and will continue to advocate for the rights and dignity of all individuals, regardless of immigration status.”

Impact of Trump’s immigration crackdown

The New York-based Vera Institute, an advocacy group that works to transform the criminal justice and immigration systems, noted that Trump’s new policy prevents judges from granting bond to anyone held in detention by ICE who had entered the United States without documentation.

“This policy—in tandem with the Laken Riley Act’s expansion of mandatory detention and the One Big Beautiful Bill’s supercharged spending on immigration enforcement and new immigration prisons—threatens to send thousands more people into notoriously appalling conditions as they await their day in court,” the institute said.

It said that, under existing law, immigration judges have the discretion to determine whether a person held in detention is neither a flight risk nor a danger to their community and is qualified for a bond hearing.
At the hearing, the Vera Institute said the immigrant could then argue that they should be released on bond as their case continues.

But the institute said judges are denied this discretion if the person falls under several categories, including how they entered the United States and whether they have been convicted of certain crimes.

In these cases, the institute said the immigrant is put under “mandatory detention” and forced to fight their case while incarcerated.

The Vera Institute said the Laken Riley Act, enacted in January, vastly expanded the criteria for mandatory detention to include people arrested for and accused of many nonviolent theft-related offenses and, for the first time, those arrested for and accused of criminal conduct but who have yet to be given a fair trial to determine their innocence.

In July, the Vera Institute noted that the US Department of Homeland Security announced it would further expand mandatory detention to anyone who entered the US without inspection.

“This means that millions of people who might have been granted a bond hearing are now being denied one and kept in ICE detention,” the Vera Institute said.

Meanwhile, as releases from immigration prisons have slowed to a trickle, daily detention numbers have reached record highs. The institute pointed to decades of research that shows that immigrants do not need to be held behind bars to ensure that they appear for their immigration court proceedings.

“We have also long seen how holding people in jail before trial in the criminal court system has made communities less safe,” the Vera institute said. “Trump’s aggressive enforcement since January has put more people in detention and will lengthen the time they’re forced to spend waiting for the resolution of their cases.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that it has joined Caribbean and other immigrants’ rights advocates in filing a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration. The lawsuit seeks to strike down ICE’s new policy of ending bond eligibility for Caribbean and other immigrants currently detained by the agency.

The ACLU warned that, if the new policy is to continue, “tens of thousands of immigrants would be jailed indefinitely while their immigration cases are considered for months or years on end.”

Michael Tan, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said that the US Constitution “guarantees all persons within the boundaries of the United States rights to equal due process under the law, full stop.”

“The Trump administration seeks to rewrite our Constitutional bedrock, denying millions of immigrants in cruel detention facilities the ability to seek bond,” he said. “With one memo, ICE hopes to keep people away from their families for months – or even years – before their cases are even heard.”

Eva Bitrán, director of immigrants’ rights and senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said that “indefinitely detaining people—especially but not exclusively those who have lived in this country for many years—is not only cruel, it’s against the law.

“This case seeks to vindicate the principle that people in our government’s custody deserve an opportunity to be heard about whether their continued detention is lawful,” she added.

According to the complaint, ICE has adopted the position that noncitizens who entered the United States without admission are ineligible for immigration court bond hearings.

But the ACLU said that US federal court have continually ruled that immigration laws and the US Constitution provide for such hearings.

“The government’s no bond policy is a new component of the administration’s mass immigration enforcement practice, which is unlawful under the immigration laws and the Constitution and, if not stopped, will result in thousands of additional people being detained in for-profit immigration prisons for extended periods of time,” said co-counsels Niels W. Frenzen and Jean Reisz in a joint statement.