While the U.S. Supreme Court has deemed it acceptable for authorities to detain immigrants facing deportation for a “brief period,” a federal judge ruled on Monday that a woman’s 14-month detention in Aurora without a bond hearing violated her constitutional right to due process.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer directed the government to hold a hearing within 10 days to decide whether Marisela Andrade de Zarate should be released from detention while she continues to challenge her deportation order. Andrade has requested protection under the Convention Against Torture and an immigration judge is scheduled to review her application later this month.

“Several federal appellate courts have concluded that, at some point, prolonged detention ... without a bond hearing violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment,” Brimmer wrote on March 20. “Accordingly, the Court finds that Ms. Andrade’s detention for over fourteen months without a bond hearing violates her Due Process rights.”

Andrade was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2010 for her role in a plot to kill her husband in California. In 2018, then- Gov. Jerry Brown commuted her sentence to 15 years to life, and she soon won release from the state’s parole board. But California released her into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which in turn transferred her to Aurora.

Andrade is the subject of online petitions asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to issue a pardon, arguing she is a survivor of trafficking and domestic violence at the hands of her late husband. One petition with 13,704 signatures contends Andrade did not mean for her husband to die, but rather for the abuse to stop.

Since December 2021, Andrade has been at the privately-run ICE facility in Aurora. That same month, an immigration judge declined to consider whether she should be released on bond, as federal law enables some immigrants to remain in custody who are at risk of committing further crimes or failing to appear for deportation hearings.

The Supreme Court has upheld Congress’s ability to require detention for that category of immigrants “for the brief period necessary for their removal proceedings.”

In Andrade’s case, she had been detained for 454 days in Aurora when she filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court, asking Brimmer to order her release within five days. Although an immigration judge last summer denied her application for protection against torture, the Board of Immigration Appeals returned the case in January for reconsideration of the evidence. The immigration judge is scheduled to hold a hearing on March 29 on Andrade’s claim that she faces a risk of torture if she returns to Mexico.

Brimmer reasoned that Andrade’s 14 months of incarceration, ongoing immigration proceedings and likely appeals in her case all suggested the detention was unconstitutionally prolonged. The federal appeals court for Colorado has not yet decided when an immigrant’s detention without a consideration for release crosses the line into a due process violation, but Brimmer decided Andrade’s detention had.

“Ms. Andrade will bear the burden of proof that she is not a flight risk or a danger to the community,” Brimmer wrote in ordering a hearing.

Andrade’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.

The case is Andrade de Zarate v. Choate et al.