amNewYork: NYC Immigrant Advocates Sue Over Trump Admin’s Refusal to Share New Policies for Judges Denying Detainees Bond

NYLAG filed a complaint against the U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) for failing to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on how immigration judges make bond determinations.

NYLAG attorneys Kate Fetrow and Shannon Lee told amNewYork that, previously, immigration judges, like those at 26 Federal Plaza, would grant bond to detained immigrants as their removal cases proceeded as long as they weren't a flight risk or a threat to society. Now, the attorneys say, clients who would've been let out of detention are being kept locked up for months on end for reasons that don't make sense, and they can't figure out why.

"We want to know what the standards are that immigration judges are using," Lee said. "From NYLAG's perspective, it feels like the Department of Justice is rewriting the rules to a game that none of us are privy to. If we don't know what the rules are and the standards are, it makes representing our clients incredibly difficult."

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Fetrow emphasized that immigrants detained who are seeking bond typically haven't been convicted of a crime, calling the Trump administration's bond denials a violation of the principles of a free society and saying the DOJ's "undermined" the constitutional permissible rationales for denying bond.

"This profound realigning of who is detained … for absolutely no reason and with no way to meaningfully challenge that detention has a huge impact on thousands of people across the country, thousands of New Yorkers, as well as their communities and their loved ones," Fetrow said. "It has vastly expanded the number of people who are being held in prison for no reason at all."

Read the full story in amNewYork, originally published on May 12, 2026, here.

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