On November 4, 2025, Buffalo Immigration Lawyer Matthew Borowski won an order granting a temporary restraining order (TRO) in United States Federal District Court for the Western District of New York. In the order, federal judge Hon. Lawrence J. Vilardo blocked the Trump administration's mandatory detention policy for undocumented immigrants. In doing so, the Court ruled that the Trump administration's re-interpretation of longstanding law to read that all undocumented immigrants who entered the country without inspection were to be detained under the "mandatory detention" language of INA Section 235(b)(2), was not legally correct. For nearly three decades, since the immigration laws were last overhauled, the federal immigration authorities applied INA Section 236(a), which allowed for a bond to be set for the release of a detained noncitizen. Judge Vilardo agreed in the case of Alvarez Ortiz v. Freden with Borowski's arguments that the plain language of the law establishes that bond is available. He also went a step further and ordered the government to place the burden of proof properly on the government, rather than on the noncitizen. The very next day, we were successfully able to get Mr. Alvarez Ortiz released on a bond and he is now back home in Connecticut with his family.
You can listen to the story here: https://shows.acast.com/the-buffalo-daily-news-now/episodes/690e39a97728b8766cdb4831
You can read the case here: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dis-crt-w-d-new-yor/117905932.html
