ICE is Refusing to Release People Who Pose No Risk. We’re Fighting Back

By: Elizabeth Gyori Senior Staff Attorney, Legal & Marie Holmes Staff Writer, Communications

Officials in ICE’s New York field office are refusing to release people from custody even when they don’t pose a safety or flight risk and in direct violation of a court-ordered settlement.

The field office continues to detain virtually everyone arrested by ICE who is eligible for release while their immigration cases proceed, meaning people languish in immigration detention for weeks or months before they can see an immigration judge and ask to be released. This practice upends people’s lives while doing nothing to protect community safety. Not only does it violate federal law, it also violates a years-long settlement between the federal government and immigrants represented by the NYCLU and the Bronx Defenders. In 2025, we secured a court order to enforce the settlement because ICE was not following its requirements, and now we are again asking the court to rule that ICE must abide by the terms of the settlement.

Federal law requires ICE officers to make individualized custody determinations to assess whether certain immigrants should be released or detained after being taken into ICE custody. Specifically, they have to look at whether the person presents a flight risk or a safety risk. From 2013 to June 2017, ICE’s New York field office released approximately 47 percent of those ICE classified as a “low” risk of flight and danger.

But under President Trump, ICE implemented a variety of policy changes designed to funnel more immigrants into detention. ICE changed its Risk Classification Assessment Tool, the algorithm it uses to determine who is eligible for release, by essentially preventing it from ever recommending release. Agents could override the tool’s recommendations at their own discretion, but rarely did so. Ultimately, in 2017, the New York field office instituted a blanket policy of denying bond or release to almost all immigrants. In the two years following, from June 2017 to September 2019, the number of low-risk people ICE’s New York field office released plummeted from 47 percent to four percent.

These stark numbers only came to light after the NYCLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the information and then fought ICE in court after the agency refused to fulfill it.

ICE designed its policy to serve Trump’s cruel agenda of separating families and coercing people into leaving the county, even when they have pending immigration proceedings. By detaining immigrants in often squalid conditions, not knowing when they will see a judge, the administration’s sinister hope is that people will choose to depart the country voluntarily – thereby boosting its deportation numbers.

In February of 2020, the NYCLU and the Bronx Defenders filed a class action lawsuit challenging the no-release policy implemented by ICE’s New York Field Office. Soon after, we won a preliminary injunction requiring that field office to individually assess whether each person poses a flight risk or danger and release them when they are not a risk.

ICE failed to follow the preliminary injunction, continuing to release only a tiny number of the people its New York field office detained. So, we returned to court to demand enforcement, which led to a settlement in 2022 that required the field office to consider release in every case, including alternatives to detention like bond (when a person pays a fee that is returned to them after they attend their court hearings) or remote monitoring. Officers also must take into account whether someone has a special vulnerability or a disability. Finally, when setting a bond amount, ICE must consider the person’s financial circumstances.

The settlement was a huge victory for the people trapped in custody. ICE ripped them from their families, their jobs, and their communities for nothing more than their immigration status. Many were trying to find legal pathways to remain in the country they called home, sometimes for years or even decades.

Under the settlement, the number of people released should have gone back up to at least 50 percent. But data analyzed in 2024 and 2025 showed that the number of people ICE released or granted bond had dropped even further, to just over one percent.

In 2025 we returned to court and won an order finding that ICE’s New York field office had violated the settlement and requiring ICE to abide by the terms of the settlement. Yet even since, ICE’s New York field office has released less than one percent of the people it detained. Since September 2025, that office has granted release to only one person, who had serious medical issues.

ICE has clung to its no-release policy, demonstrating time and again that it is dead set on detaining as many immigrants as possible. As one example, the agency unilaterally changed how it interpreted the definition of who was covered under the settlement to exclude a large number of people. Despite this change being a breach of the settlement, the agency only backtracked after a federal appeals court ruled that their new definition was unlawful in a separate case. In another example, the worksheets ICE uses to document “individualized custody determinations” show that some officers use nonsensical reasons unrelated to a person’s danger or flight risk and identical language in multiple cases to justify a detention, suggesting that a de facto no-release policy remains in place.

Because ICE has refused to follow the settlement and the court’s enforcement order, we are now asking the court to rule that ICE is presumptively out of compliance as long as the New York field office detains over 50 percent of people covered under the settlement. We also asked the court to require changes to the New York field office’s custody determination process to ensure ICE considers each person’s individual circumstances.

With Trump’s return to office and his recommitment to record immigration arrests in pursuit of his vicious deportation agenda, the stakes have only grown. Mass arrests mean more people than ever are sitting in detention centers or worse yet, self-deporting to dangerous conditions where their lives are at risk.

The court now has an opportunity to recognize the basic humanity of the people in ICE’s custody by stopping ICE from denying release or bond to people who pose no flight risk or danger. These New Yorkers have the right to remain in their communities, places of work, and homes while their immigration cases play out in court.

This piece was originally published on nyclu.org