Appeals court affirms Trump policy of jailing immigrants without bond
President Donald Trump’s administration can continue to detain immigrants without bail, marking a major legal victory for the federal immigration program and countering a series of recent rulings from lower courts across the country that said the practice was illegal.
A panel of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday evening that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country was consistent with the Constitution and federal immigration law.
Specifically, Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion that the government correctly interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act in holding that “unadmitted aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States are not eligible for bail, regardless of the length of their residence in the United States.”
Under previous administrations, most noncitizens without criminal records who were arrested far from the border had the opportunity to request a bond hearing while their cases were reviewed in immigration court. Historically, bail was often granted to people without criminal convictions who were not a flight risk, and mandatory detention was limited to people who had recently crossed the border.
“The fact that previous administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority under ‘the law’ does not mean that they did not have the authority to do more,” Jones wrote.
The plaintiffs in the two separate cases filed last year against the Trump administration were both Mexican nationals who had both lived in the United States for more than 10 years and were not flight risks, their lawyers argued. Neither man had a criminal record and both were jailed for months last year before a lower Texas court granted them bail in October.
The Trump White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention in July, overturning nearly 30 years of precedent under Democratic and Republican administrations.
Friday’s ruling also flies in the face of a California district court ruling in November, which granted detained immigrants without criminal histories the opportunity to request a bond hearing and had implications for noncitizens held in custody nationwide.
Circuit Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the only dissent in Friday’s ruling.
The elected members of Congress who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act “would be surprised to learn that it also required the detention without bail of two million people,” Douglas wrote, adding that many of those detained are “the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”
She went on to claim that the federal government is overriding the legislative process with DHS’s new immigrant detention policy, which denies bail to detained immigrants.
“Because I would reject the government’s invitation to rubber-stamp its bill by executive action, I disagree,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas’ opinion echoes widespread tensions between the Trump administration and federal judges across the country, who are increasingly accusing the administration of flouting court orders.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the ruling as “a major blow to the activist judges who are undermining our efforts to make America safe again at every turn.”
“We will continue to defend President Trump’s law and order agenda in courtrooms across the country,” Bondi wrote on the X social media platform.
