On other side author was detained for 5 hours. That is practically rounding error in __ANY__ country. I would argue there are other causes, more worthy money and effort.
As someone who was detained for about the same amount of time, under circumstances about as ridiculous as OP's, I take serious issue with this characterization of five hours' illegal detention as "practically a rounding error".
Serious question: How many hours does a person have to be detained illegally in the United States for it to warrant money and effort from the ACLU? You appear to have a specific metric for when injustice warrants response and I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you to task about it.
I am not sure what exact laws are in US. But in most countries police has right to detain people up to 24 hours without a warrant. I think in that case it was 'illegal' because police officer forgot some paperwork or said something explicit on record. Easy shot for ACLU.
This case does not really solve anything. With more similar cases, parliament just passes new law: Airport has special security rule, is not US soil until you pass some checkpoint whatever.
Real solution is to go after causes where it really hurts. This guy got $5.000/hour. Now imagine someone who spend 7 months in jail at this rate.
Per hour in jail. Not including the time in the airport detention, the missed flight, the missed journey, and all the hours spent preparing and dealing with the legal case.
Here, being absent from 99.9% of jobs here for 2 months because you're in jail would result in getting fired, which is without doubt "permanent damage".
And once you've been incarcerated here in the US, your chances of getting a job become substantially harder. So this kind of event routinely cause permanent unemployment.
Even worse, 2 months in a US jail and you have a decent chance of getting raped. Is that serious enough for you?