On December 19, 2025, a pair of major developments rocked the U.S. immigration landscape, sending ripples through New England and far beyond. In Boston, a federal court delivered a decisive rebuke to the Trump administration’s detention practices, ruling that it had unlawfully denied bond hearings to potentially thousands of people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and held in New England facilities. Meanwhile, the White House abruptly suspended the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program—commonly known as the green card lottery—citing the immigration status of a suspect in the recent Brown University shooting as justification. Both moves have ignited fierce debate, legal challenges, and palpable anxiety among immigrant communities.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the federal court’s ruling restored a crucial due process protection for immigrants detained by ICE. The court granted a motion for partial summary judgment, declaring it unlawful for the government to deny bond hearings to a certified class of individuals arrested inside the U.S. and detained in New England. The lawsuit, filed by a broad coalition including the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU of New Hampshire and Maine, law firms Araujo & Fisher LLP and Foley Hoag, and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic, challenged a policy shift initiated by the Trump administration in July 2025.
For decades, people arrested on civil immigration charges inside the United States could generally request a bond hearing under 8 U.S.C. § 1226. But in a sudden policy reversal, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice began reclassifying these individuals under 8 U.S.C. § 1225, which does not allow for bond hearings. This shift, as the court found, deprived “countless people of the right to challenge their detention in immigration court,” said Daniel McFadden, managing attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts. “Everyone in the United States is entitled to due process. The government cannot arrest and detain people inside the United States without providing them with strong procedural protections, including a hearing before a judge.”
The lawsuit was first filed in September 2025 on behalf of Jose Arnulfo Guerrero Orellana and others in similar circumstances. In October, the court granted a preliminary injunction for Mr. Guerrero Orellana, ordering a bond hearing that led to his release. Later that month, the court certified a class of individuals arrested by ICE inside the country and held in New England, expanding the potential impact of the case. Thursday’s ruling grants relief to that class, holding that the Trump administration does not have the statutory authority to detain these individuals without access to a bond hearing.
Annelise Araujo, founding principal at Araujo & Fisher LLP, highlighted the broader significance: “When the administration began routinely denying bond hearing to members of our class, it upended 30 years of standard practice and signaled a dark new strategy designed to demoralize our clients and close off well-established avenues for legal relief. We’re pleased the court recognized the essential injustice at the heart of this matter. This ruling restores hope for thousands of immigrants.”
The Massachusetts decision aligns with a December 18 ruling in California (Maldonado Bautista v. Santacruz), which vacated DHS’s nationwide policy of no-bond detention, further isolating the Trump administration’s position on the matter. Federal courts across the country have, as the ACLU notes, “almost universally rejected” the administration’s actions.
While the court’s decision was being celebrated by advocates, the Trump administration was making headlines for another major immigration crackdown. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the immediate suspension of the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, a 35-year-old initiative that grants permanent residency to people from countries with low rates of U.S. immigration. The move was justified by invoking the case of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the 48-year-old suspect in the recent Brown University and MIT shootings, who received a diversity visa in 2017.
On social media, Noem stated the lottery had enabled a “heinous individual” to enter the country and that the pause would “ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.” Legal experts, however, quickly questioned the administration’s authority to unilaterally end the program, which was created by Congress in 1990. “Congress would have to take action to actually end the diversity lottery program, this is not something [Trump] can unilaterally do,” said Ricky Murray, former chief of staff of the USCIS Refugee and International Operations Program. Even pausing the program was “legally questionable,” he added.
The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, known for its random selection process, offers a pathway to permanent residency for applicants from underrepresented countries. In 2025, nearly 20 million people applied and 131,000 were selected, including spouses and children. Portuguese citizens, for instance, won only 38 slots, according to the U.S. State Department. The program accounts for just 4 to 5 percent of all lawful permanent resident admissions annually, dwarfed by the millions of tourist and student visas issued each year.
The program has been politically contentious for years. The Trump administration first sought to eliminate it in 2017 after a diversity visa recipient was involved in an attack in New York, but Congress preserved the program. Critics on the left have at times supported its repeal as part of broader immigration reform, while many conservatives have targeted it as part of efforts to slow immigration overall. Gerardo Blanco, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, noted, “It’s the perfect program to want to eliminate because there are objections ideologically from the left and the right.” Still, Blanco argued that the administration’s decision to tie the program’s suspension to the Brown shooting “seems like, in my view, an opportunistic connection. This fits with a broader pattern of the Trump administration of using immigrants as scapegoats, blaming them for pretty much everything that goes wrong in this country.”
The suspension has created immediate uncertainty for those selected in the most recent visa lottery, many of whom are still completing their applications. Applicants must finalize the process by September 30, 2026, or lose their chance at residency. “These visas come with a huge expiration date on them,” said Leslie Ditrani, executive director of Pathway for Immigrant Workers. “If October 1 comes, and you don’t have your visa, you are just out of luck.” Ditrani called the administration’s use of the Brown and MIT tragedies to justify the suspension “misguided,” emphasizing the value immigrants bring to the country.
In New England, the Portuguese community—nearly 500,000 strong and centered in southern Massachusetts—is reeling from both the violence and the policy fallout. Helena DaSilva Hughes, president of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center in New Bedford, said the community is mourning. “Not only was Neves Valente, the alleged shooter, a Portuguese immigrant, but the MIT scientist Nuno F.G. Loureiro he purportedly shot also hailed from the country.” While the impact of the lottery’s suspension on Portuguese immigrants may be relatively small, Hughes said the sense of fear is real. Her center has hosted dozens of workshops on emergency family preparedness for immigrants, and she described her own sleeplessness following the news.
The latest actions are part of a broader crackdown: travel bans now cover 39 countries, refugee admissions have been slashed, and thousands of visas—including those of students involved in protests—have been revoked. Meanwhile, the White House has floated a “gold card” visa program for wealthy applicants, adding yet another wrinkle to the ever-shifting immigration landscape.
As legal battles loom and communities brace for further changes, the fate of thousands hangs in the balance. For now, the court’s ruling in Massachusetts offers a measure of hope, even as the suspension of the green card lottery raises new questions about the future of America’s long tradition of welcoming newcomers.