DENVER — The ACLU of Colorado, American Civil Liberties Union, and the Meyer Law Office filed a class-action lawsuit yesterday challenging a recent Trump administration policy that ends bond eligibility for millions of immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The filing amends a habeas petition brought by Alyssa Reed, of Reed Immigration, LLC, on behalf of Nestor Esai Mendoza Gutierrez, a longtime Colorado resident and small business owner. It also seeks class certification for others in Colorado subject to the new policy.
On July 8, ICE issued a new policy declaring that all people alleged to have entered the country without documentation be denied eligibility for bond during the entirety of their removal proceedings; this would impact millions of immigrants in the country, regardless of how long they have been living in the United States. The lawsuit argues that the new policy is unlawful and a profound and far-reaching departure from longstanding immigration law.
“This illegal policy threatens to imprison millions of hardworking immigrants with no criminal records and deep ties to their communities, with no recourse,” said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado legal director. “Having secured billions of dollars to build more ICE detention in Colorado and across the country, this administration now wants to fill up its immigration detention centers. This unlawful new policy is a cruel twist on the adage ‘if you build it, they will come.’ Nestor, however, has decided to bravely fight back against this sweeping expansion of ICE’s detention and deportation machine.”
“The brutality of this Trump administration policy is eclipsed only by its intellectual dishonesty and departure from decades of agency practice,” said Hans Meyer, Owner of the Meyer Law Office. “This is a fatuous attempt to weaponize immigration detention to illegitimately bolster deportation numbers and intimidate immigrant communities. But ICE is wrong on the law, and we will hold the agency to account for its lawlessness.”
Current federal law mandates detention without bond eligibility only under limited circumstances. The lawsuit asserts that Mendoza Gutierrez and others similarly situated do not meet these statutory criteria that limit bond eligibility.
The lawsuit also argues that Mendoza Gutierrez’s detention without eligibility for bond raises serious constitutional concerns and violates fundamental safeguards for due process. These constitutional protections apply to all people in the country, regardless of immigration status.
“The Constitution guarantees all persons living in the United States rights to due process under the law, full stop,” said Michael Tan, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “The Trump administration seeks to rewrite our constitutional bedrock, denying millions of immigrants in detention facilities the ability to seek bond. But the Constitution doesn't allow the government to lock people up without basic due process. “The ACLU and other immigrants’ rights advocates already filed a class-action lawsuit in California challenging ICE’s new bond policy in July 2025. The California lawsuit seeks to represent a class of individuals subject to the ICE policy, as well as a class of individuals denied bond hearings by the Adelanto Immigration Court.
In addition to Macdonald, Meyer, Reed, and Tan, the legal team includes ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorneys Scott Medlock, Sara Neel, Emma Mclean-Riggs, and Anna Kurtz, Conor Gleason with the Meyer Law Office and Anand Balakrishnan.
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