Mr. Hodge has lived in the United States for over 30 years. For over two and a half years, he has sought protection from persecution and torture in his country of origin in removal proceedings. During that time, the U.S. government has held him in mandatory immigration detention at the Buffalo Service Processing Center in New York. Under mandatory detention, Mr. Hodge has no right to request release before a judge. So Mr. Hodge is trapped in indefinite civil detention, no matter how long his deportation proceedings last, unless he accepts deportation to a country where he fears persecution and torture.

Mr. Hodge is one of 42,000 people held in U.S. immigration detention on any given day, 90% of them in for-profit, private prisons. Like criminal incarceration, immigration detention is notorious for human rights abuses, including prolonged solitary confinement, physical and sexual abuse, and preventable deaths due to medical neglect.

The majority of people in immigration detention, including Mr. Hodge, are subject to “mandatory detention.” They are jailed until the conclusion of removal proceedings, without any proof that they are dangerous or a flight risk, and denied the right to challenge their detention before an immigration judge. As a result, people who ultimately win protection from deportation in removal proceedings languish in detention indefinitely, sometimes for years. All the while, private prison companies reap outsized profits from taxpayer funding of wasteful, abusive detention.

Why is This a Key Case?

This case argues that immigrants have a constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause to be protected from prolonged civil detention in punitive conditions without review by a neutral adjudicator in which the government justifies continued incarceration. It asks the court to release Mr. Hodge unless the government can prove to an immigration judge by clear and convincing evidence that he is a flight risk or danger.

What is the status of this case?

Pending post-remand motion practice at the district court.

April 23, 2024

Amicus brief from Brooklyn Defender Services,

April 23, 2024

Amicus brief from American Immigration Council,

April 23, 2024

Amicus Brief from New York Civil Liberties Union,

April 16, 2024

Appellant Opening Brief,

October 18, 2024

District Court decision,

May 19, 2023

Petition for Habeas Corpus,