GREAT FALLS, Mont. — Twenty-four people held at the Cascade County Detention Center have been released after a federal judge found they were arrested by immigration officers without the legal steps required to keep them in custody.
U.S. District Judge Brian Morris allowed the detainees’ case to proceed as a class action, finding they shared a central claim about warrantless arrests. That ruling did not automatically free everyone in the group. Their attorneys must ask the court to release each person individually.
WATCH: Immigration detainees released in Cascade County
The issue is what officers did before making the arrests. To arrest someone without a warrant, immigration officers must have reason to believe that person is violating immigration law and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. Morris found officers had not made the required individual determination about flight risk.
Andres Haladay, a senior staff attorney with Helena-based Upper Seven Law, said officers should have considered each person’s ties to the community.
“How long have you been in the United States? Do you work? Do you have family members here? What’s your address?” Haladay said. “What are your ties to the community?”
Morris later found federal authorities had continued holding people covered by his ruling, prompting Upper Seven to file individual petitions for their release.
Federal authorities identified 53 people who met the class criteria, according to court records. Haladay said all 24 people granted release Friday left directly from the Cascade County Detention Center. He hopes around 39 people in the case will have been released by the end of the week, including five who secured release earlier through other means.
The ruling does not settle anyone’s underlying immigration case. Many of those released will still go through immigration proceedings while living outside a jail.
The releases happened one day after Sheriff Jesse Slaughter announced that a staffing shortage required the detention center to reduce its population. The court case and the staffing decision are separate, but Haladay said the timing of the order helped attorneys get the 24 people home before they could be moved to other facilities.
Many people still awaiting court decisions have since been transferred out of Cascade County, Haladay said, making future releases harder to coordinate.
On Thursday, the jail roster listed 420 inmates, including 61 classified as immigration inmates. By Tuesday afternoon, those numbers had fallen to 319 and 16. The roster does not show how many people were released or transferred, or how many of those still listed are part of the class action.
Haladay said the government has not identified a safety concern in most of the cases Upper Seven is handling.
“In almost all of these cases, the federal government has been unable to articulate any safety issue for these individuals,” he said. "These were folks who are accused of a civil violation. They were, in many cases, working, raising families, participating in their communities.”
MTN News requested comment from U.S. Customs and Border Protection but has not received a response. We will update this article when we receive a statement.
U.S. District Judge Brian Morris' Order:
