LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) — The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan has filed a federal lawsuit to demand bond hearings for eight illegal immigrants currently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Michigan. The group claims immigration officers are violating the detainees’ constitutional rights by holding them without hearings. The irony? These same individuals are in custody precisely because they entered the country without going through the proper process in the first place.
Two decades, no papers, and a plea for special treatment.
At the center of the case is 33-year-old Jose Daniel Contreras-Cervantes, a Mexican national who came to the U.S. illegally in 2006 at the age of 14 and has lived in the United States for nearly two decades. He was arrested during a traffic stop in August and later detained by ICE. The ACLU argues that under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), people like Contreras-Cervantes – long-time illegal residents – should fall under a section of the law that allows for bond hearings (§1226), not the stricter section used for new arrivals at the border (§1225). In other words, since the illegal immigrants have gotten away with being in the country illegally for so long, they should have different rules.
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That legal hair-splitting may sound technical, but the ACLU’s real goal is simple: get illegal immigrants out of detention faster. Their 33-page filing argues that these detainees aren’t “applicants for admission” under the law and therefore deserve a chance to be released while their cases drag through the courts
Legal acrobatics 101.
The case, Contreras-Cervantes v. Raycraft, was filed September 29 in the Eastern District of Michigan. The ACLU’s brief cites more than forty other cases where judges disagreed with ICE’s interpretation of the law. The lawsuit challenges the federal government’s July 2025 detention policy, which ordered that certain illegal immigrants caught inside the U.S. be held without bond for the duration of their removal proceedings.
The ACLU insists these individuals have deep ties to the community, as if years of illegal residency should suddenly earn a reward. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) points out that all eight petitioners entered the country illegally, never obtained lawful status, and were caught after arrests or traffic stops.
Bottom line.
The ACLU’s latest courtroom crusade puts the interests of those who broke U.S. law above those who followed it. Rather than defending the government’s authority to enforce immigration laws, the organization is pouring time and donor dollars into blurring the line between legal immigrants and illegal residents. If successful, the lawsuit could open the floodgates for other illegal immigrants to demand bond hearings and walk free before their deportation cases are even heard – all in the name of “due process” for people who never respected the process in the first place.
