At a federal courthouse in Omaha on Thursday, three women tearfully embraced their attorneys and each other after they were ordered to be released from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement custody.

Like the six others who had previously been released in nearly identical cases, the three women were detained during the June ICE raid on Omaha’s Glenn Valley Foods meatpacking plant. They were granted bond by an immigration judge but were kept in ICE custody after the agency filed its intent to appeal the bond determination. That resulted in an “automatic stay,” which kept them behind bars as the appeal was decided.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Bataillon ruled once again on Thursday that the automatic stay provision is unconstitutional. Yurenia Genchi Palma, Nicandra Ozuna Carlon and Felipa Lorenzo Perez will be released from custody within the next 24 hours.

Their release comes after last week’s decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals that found the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are subject to mandatory detention without a bond hearing regardless of how long they lived in the U.S. or their community ties. Advocates and attorneys say that interpretation goes against decades of precedent.

Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security had argued in both immigration court and federal court that any undocumented immigrant encountered within the U.S. may be treated as an “arriving alien” under Section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and thus subject to mandatory detention.

For decades, Section 235 was understood to apply to people encountered while crossing the border or shortly thereafter, while Section 236 was understood to apply to undocumented immigrants who are encountered in the U.S. after residing in the country. People detained under Section 236, like those arrested during the Glenn Valley raid, were entitled to a bond determination hearing.

On July 8, interim guidance issued by ICE said the agency had “revised its legal position on detention and release authorities” and categorized every undocumented immigrant under Section 235.

That legal position was frequently rejected by immigration judges in Nebraska and elsewhere. Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is the highest administrative body for interpreting immigration laws.

While the Board’s decision is binding on immigration courts – meaning that most undocumented immigrants will not be eligible for bond hearings regardless of how long they’ve lived in the country – federal courts are not bound by the decision.

Bataillon said from the bench that he disagreed with the board’s analysis and decision. But in his order releasing the three women on Thursday, he did not address whether or not it was lawful and instead focused only on the automatic stay.

“The Court need not determine the validity of the government’s argument that petitioner should be mandatorily detained under [Section 235] nor the applicability of the BIA’s decision,” Bataillon wrote. “For the time being, the court is concerned only with the lawfulness of the automatic stay.”

That’s likely to change as more people sue after they are denied the opportunity for a bond hearing because of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision. Grant Friedman, an attorney with the ACLU of Nebraska who represented Genchi Palma, said he anticipates that detainees in Nebraska and elsewhere will challenge the Board’s decision in federal court.

“I anticipate the landscape will be slightly different, because they wouldn’t be detained under an automatic stay,” Friedman said after Thursday’s hearing. “We will continue to see lawsuits across the country on this issue as more and more immigration judges start denying bond.”

At least four more lawsuits alleging wrongful detention by ICE after an immigration judge granted bond are pending in federal court in Nebraska.