The ACLU of Michigan says a Mexican national with no criminal record who’s been living in the U.S. for decades is being wrongfully held without bond.
The civil rights group says Detroit resident Juan Manuel Lopez-Campos was pulled over for a routine traffic violation in Romulus in June. A Romulus police officer contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Lopez-Campos has been in immigration detention ever since, the ACLU said.
ACLU attorney Ramis Wadood said longstanding federal policy has allowed people like Lopez-Campos — with deep community ties, no criminal record, and U.S.-citizen children — the opportunity to ask for release on bond while their case proceeds. But he said the Trump administration has recently changed that.
“What's happening to Mr. Lopez-Campos and immigrants like him is clearly illegal and defies decades of past government practice,” Wadood said. “It's also unquestionably cruel not only to him, but to his loved ones and community as well.”
The prolonged detention — and the possibility of spending many more months or even years in custody — has taken a “financial and emotional toll,” Wadood added. “It's also time taken away from him and his family that can never be returned. Justice and basic human decency demand that the government stop now.”
The ACLU is now suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, among other federal agencies and officials. They’re asking for Lopez-Campos to be released, or given the opportunity for a bond hearing.
The ACLU has also filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the larger no-bond policy in immigration cases. That policy denies “fundamental rights to due process” that the U.S. Constitution affords to all people within the country’s borders, regardless of citizenship status, and “arbitrarily reverses decades of policy and practice of providing bond hearings,” the ACLU said in a July 29 statement.
The federal government has not directly responded to inquiries about the legal issues.
