“Shadow Wins”: How ICE Avoids Judicial Accountability by Quietly Releasing Immigrants Who Challenge Being Detained – By Dara Lind (ProPublica) / May 25 2021
ICE helps maintain the status quo of prolonged detentions by releasing immigrants without having their cases vindicated in court, according to a new report.
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A new study from Louisiana shows that immigrants who challenge their detention in court are much less likely to prevail before judges than to quietly get released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while their cases are pending.
The study, conducted by Tulane University Law School’s Immigration Rights Clinic and shared with ProPublica, makes the case that what it calls “shadow wins” may allow ICE to uphold a status quo that frequently goes beyond the Supreme Court’s 2001 ruling that indefinite detention is unconstitutional.
Federal court challenges can be a detainee’s only hope of mandated release after months or years, especially in Louisiana, which has recently become a major detention hot spot. But the study finds those filings remain “complex, time consuming, and currently inaccessible for many detained immigrants.”
