LANSING — The ACLU of Michigan filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on Sept. 29 seeking bond hearings for, and the release of, eight Michigan residents currently in immigration detention.

The lead defendant in the case is Jose Daniel Contreras-Cervantes, a father of three who was diagnosed last year with leukemia and given four to six years to live, according to his wife Lupita Contreras, in a press conference hosted by the ACLU. Contreras-Cervantes was detained in August after a traffic stop in Macomb County, where he lives, and is currently being held at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Mich.

He is not receiving necessary specialized care for his cancer while in detention, his wife said, and has had two periods of time, one of 22 days and one of five days where he did not receive any medication.

Cases like Contreras-Cervantes’s are resulting in prolonged detentions because of a July policy change by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to eliminate bond hearings in most immigration detention cases, according to Miriam Aukerman, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan. In the past, she said, a case like this would have resulted in a bond hearing and likely his release while the case went through the legal process.

But under the new policy, she added, “Jose and thousands of people like him will be locked up for months or years if they try to stay with their families in America. This new directive is specifically designed to force people to give up their claims for immigration relief and leave their families behind.”

The petition for a writ of habeas corpus, filed with the lawsuit, notes that dozens of similar petitions have been filed in recent months, and that “[v]irtually every merits decision in those cases has found for the petitioners, either granting them a bond hearing or ordering their immediate release.” One such case, also filed by the ACLU in August, led to the release of Detroit resident Juan Manuel Lopez-Campos later that month.

The case was also filed on behalf of seven other individuals, one of whom Aukerman said had already been released since the case was filed. Those defendants include Fredy De Los Angeles-Flores, a 46-year-old father and sole caregiver to his teenaged daughter, as well as a 33-year-old mother of a young disabled daughter and a 23-year-old woman from the Detroit area who came to the U.S. at 11 months old.

“What I hope is that he will be released from custody, so that we can continue fighting his immigration case as a united family,” Lupita Contreras said during the press conference.