A federal judge in New Hampshire ruled on Tuesday that an asylum seeker from Uganda who had been held for more than 10 months by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement must be released immediately because the Trump administration has been violating his constitutional rights to due process.
Judge Landya McCafferty wrote that this case reflects “a troubling reality” for many immigration detainees who also have pending criminal charges, since ICE “often” refuses to transport people to their criminal court hearings, then relies on the unresolved criminal charges to justify their continued detention.
That results in what McCafferty called “a Kafkaesque spiral.”
Her decision comes as the government has been holding more people in ICE custody without bond by using a mandatory detention policy that’s likely to land before the US Supreme Court. Meanwhile, observers have documented a surge in voluntary departures among ICE detainees and an “alarming” suicide rate.
McCafferty wrote that 34-year-old Hilary Murungi Timbigamba possesses exculpatory evidence that might be useful in rebutting the criminal charges he faces. But he’s apparently been deprived of an opportunity to seek his exoneration in criminal court.
Timbigamba was arrested last July on larceny charges in Massachusetts, where he resides, after the group home where he had previously been employed reported suspicions about seven checks he deposited into his own account, according to McCafferty’s summary of the facts. Although he was accused of misappropriating funds, Timbigamba contends he submitted receipts to his employer documenting how he had spent the money appropriately on behalf of a resident with intellectual disabilities who isn’t supposed to be handling his own finances.
The Massachusetts court granted Timbigamba pretrial release in July without requiring him to pay bail, but federal officials took him into custody as he was leaving the courthouse and claimed he couldn’t be released while his immigration case was pending because of the underlying criminal charges. He’s been held in ICE custody at the federal prison in Berlin, N.H.
McCafferty ordered the federal government to hold a bond hearing for Timbigamba in April. An immigration judge did so and ruled he must remain behind bars. McCafferty concluded this week, however, that the bond hearing violated his constitutional rights because the evidence presented was legally insufficient to establish that he posed a danger or a flight risk.
McCafferty quoted from another recent case to support her reference to immigration bond hearings seemingly having “preordained outcomes.” She also quoted from an article by Tiffany Lieu, a lecturer and clinical instructor with Harvard Law School’s “Crimmigration Clinic,” to further explain the interplay between ICE detention and criminal court proceedings.
Timbigamba’s attorney in federal court, Eliana Forciniti, did not respond Thursday to a request for comment. Nor did an ICE representative. A spokesperson for the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review declined to comment.
McCafferty’s order on Tuesday directed the government to release Timbigamba within 24 hours. Records indicate he was no longer in ICE custody, as of Thursday afternoon.
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Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.