A federal judge in Boston has ordered the immediate release of an long-time immigrant ICE locked up under a law that judges keep telling it they can’t use against people who have been in the country for years - and who a Justice Department official then said could be kept locked up under that law.

On Friday, US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor ruled ICE has no right to keep holding Gildazio Martins de Oliveira, a Brazilian native who has been in the US since 1999 and who is married to an American citizen, once he makes an $8,000 bond payment.

The ruling does not mean Martins de Oliveira can stay here permanently, but that he can remain here while his wife seeks to get him a Green Card through a process open to American citizens who marry foreign nationals.

Although the ruling is similar to many others issued by judges in Boston and the rest of the US in recent months, it added a new wrinkle: Regime lawyers argued Martins de Oliveira had no right to sue for freedom - and ICE had every right to keep him in a cell - because immigrants in both California and Boston courts have filed class-action suits over the practice, he’s a part of that class, and members of a class aren’t allowed to bring their own suits.

Saylor, however, suggested, in polite judicial terms, that regime lawyers were arguing out of both sides of their mouth, because, at least in the Boston class-action case, they argued that immigration law prohibited the sort of group action the immigrants were pursuing and that only individual immigrants could sue on their own behalf - such as in Martins de Oliveira’s case.

Therefore, respondents’ contention that petitioner cannot seek habeas relief in this individual action is unavailing.

ICE grabbed Martins de Oliveira on Dec. 4 and threw him in the Plymouth County jail, under a section of immigration law that relates to "arriving" immigrants, who are normally captured right at the border and who have no rights, including the right to appeal their imprisonment.

For months now, federal judges in Boston and across the country have repeatedly ruled that section does not apply to people like Martins de Oliveira, who have been here for years and so are hardly "arriving" - which means they have full Constitutional rights, such as the right to contest their imprisonment in court - and to be released on bond unless they are judged either a threat to society because of pending criminal charges or present a flight risk.

According to Saylor’s summary of his case, Martins de Oliveira did get a hearing before an immigration judge - a Justice Department functionary subject to firing by the White House - who ruled ICE could apply the at-the-border law in his case, but that if somehow he were judged to be not "arriving," he would set bond at $8,000.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, sort of the Supreme Court of immigration cases, ruled in August that, just like the regime wanted, all undeclared immigrants are "arriving" and subject to immediate and sometimes prolonged detention, no matter how long they have been in the US. And federal judges, part of an independent judiciary established by the Constitution, keep ruling that’s wrong as well.

Last month Saylor asked regime attorneys to explain themselves. As has become their custom, they admitted that, like in pretty much every other case like Martins de Oliveira’s, judges in Boston have concluded the at-the-border law doesn’t apply so they won’t waste the court’s time trying to argue otherwise - although this time, they added the assertion he could not sue because of the class-action suits, which Saylor then rejected.

And so he granted Martins de Oliveira’s request for a writ of habeas corpus, which in his case meant an order to Plymouth County Correctional Facility Superintendent Antone Moniz to free him as soon as Martins de Oliveira presents proof his family has paid his bond.