The Legal Aid Society brought an emergency action during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic to challenge the continued civil detention of seven immigrant New Yorkers at heightened risk of severe illness or death if they were to contract the virus. The suit argued that the government’s continued detention of our clients amounted to deliberate indifference to their medical needs, in violation of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, and was part of Legal Aid’s rapid response to support medically-vulnerable individuals in custody during the pandemic. On March 27, 2020, a federal judge agreed, and ordered the release of our clients from ICE custody until their bond hearings, where the government would bear the burden of proving that they posed a danger to the community or were a flight risk, in order to justify their redetention.