At a time when Maryland is seeking to reduce its prison population and invest the savings in re-entry services, drug treatment and other crime-prevention strategies, the state is still locking up thousands of immigrants for minor crimes and holding them far longer than needed to protect public safety. That's the conclusion of a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union that found immigrant detainees in Maryland are being held for months or even years while they fight the government's attempts to deport them without ever having an opportunity to request a bail hearing in immigration court. It's a shocking denial of the right to due process that costs taxpayers millions of dollars every year.

The report, “Detained Without Process: The Excessive Use of Mandatory Detention Against Maryland's Immigrants,” is based on data from 2013 involving nearly 500 individuals taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers under a mandatory detention law passed by Congress in 1996. Lawmakers at the time approved the legislation on the assumption that immigrants charged with even minor crimes were more likely to flee or pose a public safety risk. But though later studies showed that not to be the case, Maryland continues to lock up thousands of immigrant suspects who otherwise would be eligible for bail.

Who are the people getting caught up in this misguided policy? The ACLU cited the case of a man who had lived in the United States for decades, who had a U.S. citizen wife and relatives, and whose only conviction was a single drug possession count from 20 years ago for which he served less than six months in jail. Another case involved a legal resident who was the mother of two small citizen children and was charged with shoplifting diapers and food. A third woman was a lawful resident convicted of theft who otherwise had no criminal record and had lived in the U.S. for decades.

None of the immigrants in those cases involved a serious flight risk or threat to public safety. In fact, according to ICE's own risk classification method, they were collectively among the lowest risk category of all the agency's detainees. And like at least half of the immigrants detained during that period, they were placed in mandatory detention even though there were substantial legal doubts about their cases that could have made them eligible for some form of relief from deportation and thus likely to be legally entitled to remain in the U.S.

These findings suggest that the current system of mandatory detention is heavily stacked against any immigrant who has ever run afoul of the law, no matter how long ago, and that it results in the unnecessary and unlawful detention of thousands of people in Maryland who ought to be eligible for bail. The researchers determined that if mandatory detention were ended, states could release many more people on bail without increasing the risk they would flee or pose a danger to the public.

The “excessive use of no-bond detention appears designed to discourage people from pursuing their cases, because fighting a court battle while detained for long periods of time becomes too difficult and unbearable — even for those with strong challenges to deportation,” said Sirine Shebaya, one of the report's authors. “Mandatory detention should never apply to individuals who have substantial legal challenges, a substantial claim to relief from deportation, or whose detention is likely to last for a long period of time.”

The report recommends that mandatory detention without a hearing be reserved only for the most egregious cases in which immigrant suspects lack credible grounds to challenge being deported, and that it shouldn't be used to warehouse suspects indefinitely while their cases proceed. Last year there were more than 2,400 immigrant detainees in Maryland, according to the Syracuse Clearinghouse, which collects and publishes data on immigration detention and removal matters. It's a fair bet that a substantial proportion of them didn't need to be there and could have been released safely had they been allowed to request bail. As it is, they were denied due process simply because of their immigrant status.

Maryland can't on its own change the federal law requiring the mandatory detention of immigrant suspects. But state and local policies can have a big impact on how many people end up being detained in Maryland. Many suspects are picked up by ICE either in county jails or probation offices after local officials alert the agency to their immigrant status. There have been cases in which a parolee shows up to meet his or her parole officer only to be met and taken into custody by ICE agents. That shouldn't be happening in a state that is trying to reduce its prison population and invest in crime-prevention. Maryland is locking up too many immigrants for minor crimes and holding them too long without due process, and it needs to break the habit.