Summary: Federal judges ruled that hundreds of Michigan immigrants were detained without bond hearings, violating constitutional law. The Trump administration expanded mandatory detention policies targeting immigrants without criminal records. More than 800 habeas corpus cases were filed in Michigan federal courts since 2025, with judges granting relief in about 90% of rulings. The Department of Justice criticized federal judges for overruling immigration judges’ bond decisions amid ongoing appeals. Carlos Santodomingo Sánchez came to the United States in 2023 in hopes of finding safety from his homeland’s upheaval. The ex-Venezuelan police officer and self-described “man of the law” checked in at a U.S. Consulate at the Mexico border, applied for asylum and obtained a temporary federal government designation to protect him from deportation — going on to live and work in the United States for nearly three years. Nevertheless, late last year, the 29-year-old Ypsilanti resident landed in a Michigan immigration detention center without a bond hearing or any sense of when he might get out. At the North Lake Processing Center, he shared a cell and toilet with a bunkmate, ate bologna and white bread for meals and occasionally heard murmurings of attempted suicides by fellow detainees. Eventually, he sued for his release in federal court. “I cried a lot. … I felt helpless,” Santodomingo Sánchez told a Detroit Free Press reporter in Spanish in February, when he was freed from more than three months in detention. “No immigrant is prepared to be locked up,” he later added. Santodomingo Sánchez is among thousands of immigrants across the United States and hundreds in Michigan who federal judges ruled were unconstitutionally detained without a bond hearing — meaning they were jailed in a civil court process without even a chance at release. President Donald Trump and representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have said their immigration crackdown targets “the worst of the worst” — or those who have committed serious crimes. But cases reviewed by the Free Press show many detainees had no criminal record and were already in a legal process to stay in the United States — a pattern of detainment immigration lawyers say is fueled by arrest quotas and available detention space, not just a goal to deport dangerous people. On Wednesday, March 18, the Trump administration will argue against a judge's order freeing a Detroit father of five in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. It's one of several cases under consideration by the appeals court that could impact hundreds of detainees in Michigan, and an issue likely destined for the U.S. Supreme Court. A Free Press review of more than 100 of these cases that began in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan gives a window into what it has taken for immigrants to get a chance at freedom most courts agree they deserve. Of 120 concluded detainee cases reviewed by the Free Press from 2025, judges ruled 89 were unlawfully denied bond hearings. Those detained typically lacked criminal records, and dozens were — like Santodomingo Sánchez — in the midst of a legal process to determine whether they could stay in the United States, their attorneys said in court filings.   Some were picked up in metro Detroit during immigration case check-ins to comply with that process, the Free Press found, like a Cuban asylum seeker who married a U.S. citizen and was detained when the pair showed up for a scheduled visa meeting last year. Detainees were held for a median of three months before federal judges ordered they be given bond hearings or immediately released, the review found. But bond hearings do not guarantee freedom: In Detroit and elsewhere, defense lawyers say even those granted hearings are still routinely denied bond or given prohibitively high bond amounts — keeping them behind bars.   The cruelty is the point, said Miriam Aukerman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. The ACLU represents multiple people in detention cases all set to be heard by the federal appeals court this week. “As a result of radical reinterpretation of the law, the government’s position is we’re going to lock them up and throw away the key. There is no way that can go home to their families,” Aukerman said in a recent phone interview. “It is one of the largest abuses of federal power I think that one can imagine. It is depriving hundreds — eventually it could be millions — of people of their liberty for absolutely no reason.” In a written statement, a Department of Justice spokesperson said federal judges who disagreed with immigration judges' decisions to withhold bond hearings for detainees were “throwing judicial temper-tantrums and insulting the intelligence and professionalism of our dedicated corps of with their activist rulings.” “These federal judges simply disagree with the outcomes of the immigration judge bond decisions,” the statement said, issued without a name. “They are impugning the integrity or competence of our immigration judges solely to give them a hook to review the IJ decisions they disagree with but would otherwise be unable to directly review … they should focus on impartially interpreting immigration law to keep the American people safe.” Bondless lockups face backlash Federal judges across the country and in Michigan ruled in favor of at least 4,400 detainees between October 2025 and February who filed what are known as Habeas Corpus petitions. The judges determined the detainments violate a nearly 30-year-old law allowing most immigrants already in the United States to be released on bond while their cases play out in immigration court, according to reporting by Reuters. The Trump administration widened its use of mandatory indefinite detention in July, implementing a policy that rendered any noncitizens who had arrived in the country “without inspection” eligible for it. Before that, mandatory detention without bond was generally reserved for noncitizens who’d committed serious crimes in the United States and faced expedited deportation, and immigrants arriving at the border and awaiting judgment of whether they will be paroled into the country or sent away. Until 2025, habeas petitions were rarely filed in Michigan’s two U.S. district courts — with no more than a handful of monthly cases in each court from 2008 to September 2025, according to an analysis by Michigan Public. Since Trump’s January 2025 return to office and his administration’s opening of the Midwest’s largest immigrant detention facility in northern Michigan, more than 800 habeas cases have been filed in Michigan’s federal courts, according to the NPR-affiliated news outlet. Judges sided with the detainees more than 500 times through Feb. 18, granting approximately 90% of the habeas petitions they ruled on, Michigan Public reported. The rulings to free detainees or give them bond hearings came from judges who were appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents, including Trump-appointed Western District Chief Judge Hala Y. Jarbou. Concluded cases in which judges did not find unlawful detainment were primarily dismissed, according to the Free Press review. As of early February, just two habeas petitions originating in Detroit federal court were denied. In granting a habeas petition for a 46-year-old Detroit man in the United States for 26 years and with three U.S. citizen children, Eastern District Judge Brandy R. McMillion wrote, “the recent shift to use the mandatory detention framework … is not only wrong but also fundamentally unfair. In a nation of laws vetted and implemented by Congress, we don’t get to arbitrarily choose which laws we feel like following when they best suit our interests.” The Trump administration has appealed some of the rulings. It notched a victory in February when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that mandatory detention without bond is permissible for immigrants who initially entered the country without inspection, regardless of how long they’ve been in the United States. “The statute unambiguously provides for mandatory detention,” Reagan-appointed Judge Edith H. Jones wrote in the ruling that applies to several Southern states. “The text says what it says, regardless of the decisions of prior Administrations.” Court wins don't ensure freedom While the federal judges’ rulings have triggered bond hearings — they do not guarantee detainees’ release. Whether to grant bond remains the decision of immigration judges who are employees of the U.S. Department of Justice, as immigration proceedings are administrative and separate from the judicial system. Immigrant attorneys say those Trump administration judges are now liberally labeling more people flight risks and imposing bonds so high they keep detainees behind bars. The average 2025 bond for a Michigan immigrant detainee was $6,000, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse maintained by Syracuse University, an amount that must be paid in full. That‘s in addition to the cost of bringing a habeas petition, which can cost thousands. Whereas past administrations used detention “to ensure people show up at their (immigration) hearings … Now you’re seeing it used as a way to deter people from continuing with their cases,” said Ruby Robinson, managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. He added that immigration authorities are incentivized to jail as many as possible by arrest quotas and funding increases for detention facilities. News outlets have reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a goal of 3,000 arrests per day and Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act set aside $38 billion to expand ICE detention capacity. In one release petition filed in Detroit federal court, an attorney said her client — a Sterling Heights asylum seeker from Egypt — had been jailed due to available detention space. Attorney Sara Brikho wrote in the court filing that in response to an inquiry she sent about why her client was jailed, a Department of Homeland Security member said, “‘He was taken into custody simply because we have bedspace to detain a lot of people, so we did a custody re-determination, and he will be held pending his appeal. That's it, there's nothing else,'" Brikho said the DHS employee said. The DHS response “was deeply concerning,” Brikho wrote. "There was no allegation of misconduct, no violation, and no new development in his case.” An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson did not provide a comment. Immigration arrests in Michigan have skyrocketed since Trump’s January 2025 return to office, from at least 970 in 2024 to at least 2,400 from January to mid-October of last year, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Free Press. Immigrants had roots, not records Those who federal judges deemed unlawfully detained in Michigan include a Romeo father of three with leukemia who came to the United States from Mexico nearly 20 years ago, at age 14, and struggled to get his daily cancer medication while at North Lake, court filings show. Also unlawfully detained were a Detroit father and business owner with nine employees who came to the United States from Peru more than 20 years ago, and a Detroit father from Mexico in the United States for 15 years, whose second U.S. citizen child was born just days after he was taken into ICE custody. Of those three, two were picked up after routine traffic stops, at least one involving local police. People on lawful pathways to obtaining residency are increasingly being targeted, experts said, including those who fled persecution in their home countries or were victims of crimes who feared retaliation for reporting them. “You’re seeing every day, people who are lawfully present, people who have work permits, people who are in process — who have pending cases in immigration court, pending asylum cases … or other types of relief that’s pending … those people are being detained,” said Robinson, of the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. Though they have “legal presence” in the United States, Robinson said they are “technically deportable” because they lack “legal status.” Santodomingo Sánchez had made a case for fleeing his home country at a U.S. Consulate in Mexico in 2023, saying he was a police officer who could no longer comply with then-President Nicolás Maduro’s brutal crackdown on opponents. He was allowed into the United States to apply for asylum, given a work permit and granted what’s known as Temporary Protected Status — a designation at the time afforded to Venezuelans with their home country in the midst of political and economic crisis. In October of last year, Santodomingo Sánchez accidentally hit a store sign while driving his roofing company’s truck in Detroit. When police responded, he said he was so sure of his right to be in the country that he “thought everything would be fine.” Though the Trump administration revoked TPS for many Venezuelans last year, legal challenges were still working their way through the courts and, according to court records, Santodomingo Sánchez’s asylum application remained in process. His optimism faded when Border Patrol agents arrived. He was detained along with a co-worker, he said, and soon after lodged at North Lake. Policeman turned detainee Detention upended Santodomingo Sánchez’s finances and tested his sanity, he said. He lost his apartment when he could no longer make rent and had to stop sending money to family in Venezuela who depend on his support, he said. In the cell next to his, he watched officers wheel away a man on a stretcher, “totally wrapped up so nobody could see.” Santodomingo Sánchez said he was unsure what happened to the man. A person, who answered the phone at North Lake Processing Center and did not give their name, refused comment. Another detainee — a diabetic with heart problems — died in December after his medical needs went unmet, his family told a Chicago TV station. ICE has reported it as the only death at North Lake, citing suspected “natural causes.” “Not everyone can stay calm in situations like this,” Santodomingo Sánchez said. “They don’t have the mental stability to be shut up in a place like that.”   As days turned to months, a former employer connected him with an attorney. Across the country, detainees were suing the federal government and winning release, and a Houston-based immigrant aid group agreed to help cover his legal fees. In late January, a federal judge ruled Santodomingo Sánchez’s detention unlawful. An immigration judge ordered him released in early February without having to pay bond. He was required to wear an ankle tether. His attorney says he has no criminal history. Santodomingo Sánchez is now working to pay off about $2,500 he still owes his lawyer, he said. With roofing work slow, he delivers food for DoorDash and has scraped together enough money to move into an apartment with roommates.   At a downtown Detroit coffee shop after an immigration office check-in in February, his head swiveled toward the sound of police sirens. He said he still fears being suddenly taken back into custody or deported to Venezuela, where he believes he could be jailed for disobeying orders and fleeing the country. He tries to stay positive, saying, “We’ll manage, we’ll manage something.” But he wishes the Trump administration could see him — and the people he met at North Lake — as he sees them. “We aren’t what you think we are — delinquents, criminals, bad people,” Santodomingo Sánchez said. “These are people who really actually came to make a better life here, to have a just and good life.” Free Press data journalist Kristi Tanner contributed reporting. Violet Ikonomova is an investigative reporter at the Detroit Free Press focused on government and police accountability. Contact her at [email protected]. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Judges: Hundreds of immigrants jailed illegally in Michigan Reporting by Violet Ikonomova, Beki San Martin and Dave Boucher, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Summary: Tennessee teenagers allege xAI’s Grok chatbot was used to create sexualized images of minors. The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California on March 16, 2024. Photos of at least 18 girls were digitally altered and spread on Discord and Telegram. Authorities, including California’s attorney general, are investigating xAI’s editing tools. When a mother from eastern Tennessee asked local police how someone had created naked photos of her teenage daughter, she recalls being told it was a company she had never heard of: xAI, the artificial intelligence start-up run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Police alleged a person arrested in December had used Grok, xAI’s chatbot, to edit photos, including one from the teen girl’s Instagram account, removing a blue bikini from one image to “depict her without any clothes,” according to a lawsuit filed on March 16. The teen is suing xAI as part of a group of Tennessee teenagers who allege the company’s AI tools were used to create nude images of them by editing photos in which they were clothed. The edited photos spread across Discord and Telegram in recent months, and some were bartered for other child sexual abuse material in online chatrooms, according to the complaint, which was first reported by The Washington Post. The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, alleges a single perpetrator compiled images and videos of more than 18 girls, many of whom attended the same school, and digitally altered some of them using AI. It is the first action brought by alleged minor victims of child sexual abuse material stemming from an “undressing” scandal that has plagued xAI in recent months. The mother of one of the teens, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to maintain her child’s privacy, said the incident “crushed” her daughter, a social and outgoing student-athlete. The three plaintiffs, including two minors, seek damages for child pornography violations and aim to prevent the company from allowing image editing like that used to alter their photos. Attorneys allege xAI fostered an environment in which the spread of child sexual abuse material was inevitable, as the technology and the company’s public messaging encouraged people to create explicit images. A “model that can create sexualized images of adults cannot be prevented from creating CSAM of minors,” according to the complaint. “These young people — these children — are facing a lifetime of having these … sexualized images of what appears to be a child’s body out there on the internet,” said Vanessa Baehr-Jones, who is representing the plaintiffs in the proposed class action. “It wouldn’t have been possible but for this tool that xAI released knowing full well that this material could be generated.” Musk and xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk said in January in a post on X that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.” The chatbot only follows user requests, he said, and will refuse to produce anything illegal, adding that “adversarial hacking” could lead the tool to act unexpectedly. “If that happens, we fix the bug immediately,” he said. Musk said in a post on X recently that “if it’s allowed in an R-rated movie, it’s allowed” by Grok’s image and video generator tool. The lawsuit comes after xAI ignited a firestorm by allowing users to “undress” real subjects in photos through editing features and capabilities unlocked via its Grok Imagine tool and “Spicy” mode. The capabilities allowed users to create sexual and revealing images of real people by depicting them in garments as tiny as a string of dental floss, for example. The editing led to the generation of millions of sexualized images, including what researchers said were an estimated 23,000 images appearing to depict children over an 11-day period. Authorities, including the California attorney general, the European Commission and Britain’s communications regulator, opened investigations tied to the features. In January, xAI said it had rolled back its editing tools in some jurisdictions, after previously limiting image generation to paying users. Grok’s embrace of sexualized material arose as part of an effort by xAI to attract more users to its chatbot, The Post reported last month. The suit alleges xAI committed a range of offenses, including creating child pornography and launching a feature riddled with design defects, and argues the company knowingly allowed its tools to generate sexual images of minors as part of an effort to monetize its AI. The complaint said that editing images of real children to create sexualized images constitutes creating child pornography. U.S. officials have previously said sexually explicit computer-generated depictions of children are illegal. According to the complaint, “xAI — and its founder Elon Musk — saw a business opportunity: an opportunity to profit off the sexual predation of real people, including children.” The students in Tennessee learned of the explicit images late last year, after one of them, identified in the lawsuit as “Jane Doe 1,” received a message on Instagram. It said explicit photos of her were spreading on the chat platform Discord. The lawsuit said that one of the child sexual abuse images of her originated from a photo of her at her school homecoming in September. Another, depicting her topless, appeared to have been made using a yearbook photo, the lawsuit said. She “was a minor during the operative time,” according to the suit. She received a link to a Discord server, “which contained images and videos of at least 18 other minor females, many of whom Jane Doe 1 recognized from her school,” the suit states. According to the complaint, police last year opened a criminal investigation into the perpetrator. He was arrested in December, the complaint said, and police searched his phone. But the images took on a life of their own, circulating broadly. “In Telegram group chats with hundreds of other users, her CSAM files for sexually explicit content of other minors,” the lawsuit said. Attorneys said they engaged with third-party experts to determine the images had been created by AI and, specifically, Grok. The complaint alleges the perpetrator turned to Grok and other tools that license its capabilities, including apps designed to “undress people,” to manipulate real photos of underage people. Those tools effectively serve as a middleman, attorneys said, bringing Grok’s capabilities to a user who isn’t turning directly to Grok’s website or the X app. “In all instances, the real images and videos uploaded into Defendants’ servers were not unlawful but only became unlawful content after Defendants’ AI morphed the files on xAI servers to produce and distribute CSAM,” according to the complaint. By February, the two other plaintiffs, both minors, learned through the criminal investigation that the perpetrator had used their images to create child sexual abuse material as well, according to the lawsuit. The consequences of the abuse are likely to follow the students for decades, attorneys said. The plaintiffs, the complaint said, will probably receive National Center for Missing and Exploited Children notifications for the rest of their lives, informing them that “criminal defendants have possessed, received, or distributed CSAM files depicting them.” In an interview, Annika K. Martin, lead counsel in the suit, posed questions she would ask to the xAI founder himself. “As a parent can you imagine your child — your child’s face — on images of ... depraved actions put into video of grossly sexual behavior?” she asked. “Your child’s voice on video screaming. Can you imagine that as a parent? Can you imagine that for your child and feel OK with what you’ve done?”

Summary: Bank of America settled a civil lawsuit alleging it facilitated sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein. The settlement was announced during a March 12 court call with U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff. The settlement requires court approval, with a hearing set for April 2 in Manhattan. The lawsuit accused Bank of America of ignoring suspicious transactions linked to Epstein's sex trafficking. Bank of America has settled a civil lawsuit brought by women who accused the bank of facilitating their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, court records showed on March 16. Lawyers for the bank and the women told Manhattan-based U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff in a March 12 telephone call that they had reached a "settlement in principle," according to a court filing. The terms of the settlement were not immediately clear. The settlement requires Rakoff's approval. Lawyers for both sides are scheduled to submit legal papers about the settlement by March 27, and the judge scheduled a court hearing for April 2 to consider approving the deal. Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer for the women, said in a statement: "Today’s resolution of the case against Bank of America is one more step on the road to much deserved justice." A spokesman for Bank of America declined to comment. The proposed class action, filed in October by a woman using the pseudonym Jane Doe, accused the nation's second-largest bank of ignoring suspicious financial transactions related to Epstein despite a "plethora" of information about his crimes because it valued profit over protecting victims. Bank of America has said Doe alleged merely that it provided routine services to people who at the time had no known links to Epstein, and that any suggestion that it was more deeply involved was "threadbare and meritless." Rakoff ruled in January that Bank of America must face Doe's claims that it knowingly benefited from Epstein's sex trafficking and obstructed enforcement of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Among the transactions Doe flagged were payments to Epstein by Apollo Global Management's billionaire co-founder, Leon Black. Black stepped down as Apollo's chief executive in 2021 after a review by an outside law firm found he had paid Epstein $158 million for tax and estate planning. He has denied wrongdoing and said he was unaware of Epstein's criminal conduct. Black had been scheduled on March 26 to be questioned under oath by lawyers for Doe and Bank of America. The deposition is not expected to go forward because of the settlement. A scheduled May 11 trial will also not take place if Rakoff approves the settlement. Doe's lawyers have also sued other alleged enablers of Epstein's sex trafficking, and in 2023 reached settlements of $290 million with JPMorgan Chase and $75 million with Deutsche Bank on behalf of his accusers. Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide by New York City's medical examiner. (Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Chizu Nomiyama)