More than a dozen people remain in ICE custody in Nebraska despite an immigration judge granting their release on bond

At least 16 people remain in ICE custody at the Lincoln County Jail despite an immigration judge ordering their release on bond, according to statements made by attorneys for the U.S. government at a Tuesday hearing.

Nebraska ACLU Executive Director Mindy Rush Chipman said there are likely more people in the same situation at detention centers across Nebraska.

The revelation came during a Tuesday hearing that resulted in the release of Maria Reynosa Jacinto, a 50-year-old woman who was taken into ICE custody during a workplace raid at Omaha meatpacking plant Glenn Valley Foods in June. Since the raid, Reynosa Jacinto and others have been held at the Lincoln County Jail in North Platte.

In July, an immigration judge granted Reynosa Jacinto’s release on a $9,000 bond, according to court documents. Her family members and an advocacy group attempted to pay the bond multiple times but were unable to do so on the online portal.

Two other women, Floribertha Mayo Anicasio and Yanier Garcia Jimenez, were released from the jail last week after they filed separate, successful lawsuits challenging their continued detention after they were granted bond. In decisions ordering their immediate release, Senior U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Bataillon found that the continued detention of the two women violated their rights to due process.

And on Monday, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of a fourth woman, 48-year-old Sabina Carmona-Lorenzo, under nearly identical circumstances. Carmona-Lorenzo was taken into custody during the Glenn Valley raid, was granted bond by an immigration judge, but remains detained despite multiple attempts to pay her bond.

Given the success in similar cases, Chipman said the ACLU is optimistic that Carmona-Lorenzo will prevail in her lawsuit.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Synowicki said during Tuesday’s hearing that the government believes 16 people remain in custody at the Lincoln County Jail after a judge granted their release on bond. Though he said he didn’t know how many of those 16 had actually attempted to post bond, ACLU attorneys said bail funds and advocacy organizations have the money in hand.

Though Reynosa Jacinto and the other petitioners were taken into custody after living in the U.S. for decades, ICE has maintained that it may treat any undocumented immigrant encountered in the country as an “arriving alien.” That would trigger what’s known as an automatic stay, which allows ICE to keep a person in custody regardless of an immigration judge’s bond determination.

ACLU attorneys said that goes against decades of precedent and practice.

“Recently, ICE has – without warning and without any publicly stated rationale – reversed course and adopted a policy of attempting to treat all individual noncitizens that were not previously admitted to the U.S. that are contacted in the interior of the U.S. at any time after their entry as 'arriving' and ineligible for bond regardless of the particularities of their case,” ACLU attorneys wrote in Carmona-Lorenzo’s complaint.

In ordering Reynosa Jacinto’s release, Bataillon did not directly address the practice of classifying all encountered undocumented immigrants as “arriving aliens,” though he did say the court “tends to agree” that doing so is unsupported by law. The Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative body for interpreting immigration laws, will hear arguments on this issue in the coming weeks.

Read Bataillon's decision ordering Reynosa Jacinto's release

A class-action lawsuit was filed in California last month to challenge this practice. A judge in that case issued a temporary restraining order that applied only to the named plaintiffs in the case, and the process is underway to certify the class. If the class is certified, Chipman said, the Nebraska detainees held under the same circumstances would be impacted by decisions in that case.

Bataillon expressed concern over the prospect of attorneys bringing 16 different cases in which the facts are essentially the same. He told the government that his decisions would remain consistent unless a case presented different facts.

Chipman said the judge’s comments gave the team some hope that people in similar circumstances will be released – perhaps without additional litigation.

“With what you heard from the bench today, we’re feeling even more optimistic,” Chipman said. “In fact, we’re hopeful we can use non-litigation efforts to secure the release of similarly situated individuals in Lincoln County Detention Center, but perhaps everyone who’s being unlawfully detained in Nebraska.”

According to court documents, Reynosa Jacinto arrived in the U.S. from Guatemala in 2005. She has one daughter, who recently turned 19 years old and is a U.S. citizen.

They were reunited on Tuesday afternoon, the ACLU said in a press release.