Green Card Holder Bond Hearing Ordered in Kentucky ICE Case

A federal judge in Kentucky ruled that holding a Polish-born permanent resident for more than a year without a bond hearing violated due process, and told the government to justify her detention by clear and convincing evidence.

A federal judge in Covington, Kentucky, has ordered a green card holder bond hearing for Beata Siemionkowicz, a Chicago-area mother from Poland whom ICE has held since Aug. 2, 2025. The Nov. 3 order in Siemionkowicz v. Daley found that her detention under the mandatory detention statute, with no hearing at all, had become unconstitutional, and it gave immigration authorities seven days to hold one at which the government, not the detainee, carries the burden of proof.

The ruling does not free her or decide whether she can stay. It addresses a gap that permanent residents with old, minor convictions fall into: Congress requires their detention during removal proceedings, and the statute never guarantees a bond hearing, however long those proceedings run.

A green card holder bond hearing the statute does not require

On the threshold statutory question, she lost. The court found that Siemionkowicz is held under 8 U.S.C. 1226(c), which mandates custody for noncitizens charged with certain crimes, and that she “does not have a statutory right to a bond hearing.” DHS charged her as deportable for two crimes involving moral turpitude. According to LINK nky, those were retail theft misdemeanors in Lake County, Illinois, in 2005 and 2011; the ACLU, which represents her, says she has not been charged with any crime in more than 15 years.

The case turned instead on the Constitution. When the Supreme Court upheld mandatory detention in Demore v. Kim in 2003, it relied on the premise that such custody is brief, finding that it “lasts roughly a month and a half in the vast majority of cases” and “about five months” when the detainee appeals. Fifteen years later, in Jennings v. Rodriguez, the Court refused to read a six-month limit into the statute but left constitutional challenges to prolonged detention for lower courts to resolve.

That is the opening this court used. Based on the August 2025 arrest date the court cited, Siemionkowicz had been held about 15 months, roughly three times the longer period Demore described. Applying the three-part Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, the court found that every factor favored her: her liberty interest, the risk of error “in the complete absence of other procedural safeguards,” and the government’s interest, noting that “bond hearings have nominal fiscal and administrative burdens.” It held that her detention “violates due process.”

The order also flips the usual burden. In an ordinary bond hearing, the detainee must persuade the immigration judge that she is neither a danger nor a flight risk. Here, “the Government must demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence” that continued detention is necessary. The court noted that the Sixth Circuit has not settled the standard and relied on its own earlier rulings.

Who else this reasoning reaches

The order binds only this case, but its logic travels. Permanent residents charged over old theft or fraud convictions can be held under section 1226(c) for the full life of their cases, appeals included. In her case, an immigration judge denied her cancellation of removal, and her appeal is pending at the Board of Immigration Appeals, LINK nky reported in September. Each stage adds months that Demore did not contemplate.

The government’s position has real support: Congress wrote section 1226(c) in 1996 to keep noncitizens with criminal charges in custody, and the Supreme Court upheld it. Without a ruling from the Sixth Circuit or the Supreme Court, outcomes will keep depending on which district court hears the petition, a pattern visible in recent fights over mandatory detention cases headed to the Supreme Court and re-detention without a bond hearing in Colorado.

A hearing is not a release. The Board of Immigration Appeals has recently taken a hard line on flight risk, including in a precedent that treated repeated unlicensed driving as grounds to deny bond. The open question is whether the government can meet the higher standard with a record of two misdemeanors more than a decade old. The Chicago Tribune reported that her hearing was scheduled for Thursday morning.

“This ruling gives us hope that we might be able to hug our mother soon,” Gabi Siemionkowicz, one of her two U.S.-citizen daughters, said in a statement released by the ACLU of Illinois.

What to watch

By about Nov. 10: the bond hearing must take place within seven days of the Nov. 3 order.
Nov. 17: the government must file a status report with the hearing date and outcome.
Later: whether the government appeals to the Sixth Circuit, which could settle the burden-of-proof question for Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

Author's website Author's posts