A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the Trump administration’s policy of denying bond hearings to broad groups of immigration detainees, a major legal win for President Trump’s deportation push.
In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded the administration properly reinterpreted federal immigration law to bar many unauthorized immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement from seeking release on bond before an immigration judge. Historically, immigrants who had lived in the U.S. unlawfully for years were generally eligible for bond hearings to argue they were not flight risks and could pursue their cases outside detention. Mandatory detention had been limited mainly to recent border crossers and certain criminal offenders.
The Trump administration took the position that anyone who entered the U.S. illegally — regardless of when — is subject to mandatory detention during removal proceedings, with release possible only if ICE exercised parole on humanitarian or public interest grounds. That approach has led ICE to detain indefinitely people who entered years or decades earlier and who previously would have been eligible for bond, including many without criminal records.
The mass-detention policy has been challenged in federal courts nationwide, straining government resources; most judges have ruled the policy illegal. The 5th Circuit panel disagreed, reversing two lower-court decisions and siding with the administration’s interpretation that federal law mandates detention of large numbers of unauthorized immigrants apprehended in the interior and labeled “applicants for admission.”
The majority opinion, written by Judge Edith Jones (a Reagan appointee) and joined by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan (a Trump appointee), stated that “the text says what it says,” and that prior administrations’ choices to exercise less enforcement authority did not mean the law prohibited broader detention.
Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the ruling on social media, calling it a “significant blow against activist judges” who she said had undermined enforcement efforts.
Judge Dana Douglas, a Biden nominee, dissented. She argued the government’s reading ignored historical precedent and downplayed that prior administrations did not pursue mass detention without bond. Douglas questioned the policy’s justification, noting it would detain “some of them the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens,” and criticized the majority for relying on a thin basis to conclude Congress intended such widespread mandatory detention.
