Minneapolis Team Featured for their Pro Bono Work on Behalf of ICE Detainees, Almost All of Whom Have Been Released

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Berger Montague, a leading national plaintiff law firm, represented more than 40 individuals detained during the ICE surge in the Twin Cities pro bono with habeas corpus petitions and filed a class action habeas case U.H.A. et al. v. Bondi et al., which challenged the illegal arrest and imprisonment of resettled refugees. Habeas corpus, Latin for ‘produce the body’, protects individuals from unlawful detention by requiring authorities to justify imprisonment before a court. The Court in the Bondi case issued a preliminary injunction, resulting in the proposed class being released from detention.

The U.H.A. et al. v. Bondi et al. case was covered by the Star Tribune, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, AP News, Law360, MPR, and Bloomberg Law, among others. A recent Star Tribune article featured Executive Shareholder E. Michelle Drake and quoted U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, who said the U.S. government’s policy of arresting and detaining refugees raised constitutional concerns and turned the refugees’ “American Dream into a dystopian nightmare.”

The Minneapolis Berger Montague team won the Pro Bono Litigation Counsel Award from The Advocates for Human Rights for their work in UHA v. Bondi.

Berger Montague’s habeas corpus advocacy was also recently featured on Telemundo Minnesota and MPR News.

The Telemundo broadcast discussed how attorneys with no immigration experience had taken on these immigration detention cases free of charge. The MPR story discussed how Shareholder John Albanese got involved when immigration arrests were made in the daycare his children attend.

“These are warrantless, surprise arrests of law-abiding individuals who were approved to come to the United States before ever even entering this country,” said Executive Shareholder E. Michelle Drake. “ICE’s warrantless arrests of these individuals were exactly the kind of power abuse the Fourth Amendment forbids.” 

“I think if you spoke to the people in our office, everyone felt like we had no choice. It was a moral imperative to take on these cases,” said Shareholder John Albanese.

“It is our community, and we needed to help the most we could,” said Associate Marika K. O’Connor Grant. “There were so many people being detained that the immigration lawyers did not have the capacity to take more cases, so they needed the extra help.”

“We had to do something. That’s the sentiment that all of us at the firm had,” said Associate Soledad Slowing-Romero. “All the attorneys in Minnesota wanted to help. That’s why the courts were flooded. We had to get our neighbors out of illegal detention.”

Read more about our pro bono work at www.bergermontague.com/probono. More about our class action case on behalf of detained refugees can be found at www.bergermontague.com/refugees.  

Berger Montague is one of the nation’s preeminent law firms focusing on complex civil litigation, class actions, and mass torts in federal and state courts throughout the United States. With more than $2.4 billion in 2025 post-trial judgments alone, the Firm is a leader in the fields of complex litigation, antitrust, consumer protection, defective products, environmental law, employment law, securities, and whistleblower cases, among many other practice areas. For over 55 years, Berger Montague has played leading roles in precedent-setting cases and has recovered over $50 billion for its clients and the classes they have represented. Berger Montague is headquartered in Philadelphia and has offices in Chicago; Malvern, PA; Minneapolis; San Diego; San Francisco; Toronto, Canada; Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, DE.