President Donald Trump’s administration can continue to detain immigrants without bail, representing a major legal victory for the federal immigration agenda and a standoff A large number of the latter Trial court decisions across the country have argued that the practice is 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 hearings to immigrants arrested across the country is consistent with the Constitution and federal immigration law.
Specifically, Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones in a 2-1 majority opinion held that the government correctly interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act by asserting that “unauthorized aliens arrested anywhere in the United States are ineligible for release on bail, regardless of their length of residence within the United States.”
Under previous administrations Most are non-citizens With no criminal record Who were caught away From the border they had the opportunity to request a bail hearing while their cases were heard in immigration court. Historically, bonds were often given to those who had no criminal convictions and were not a flight risk, and mandatory detention was limited to recent border crossers.
“The decision of previous administrations to use less than their full executive authority under” the law “does not mean they lack the authority to do more,” Jones wrote.
The plaintiffs in the two separate cases filed last year against the Trump administration were Mexican citizens who had lived in the United States for more than 10 years and were not a flight risk, their lawyers said. Neither man had a criminal record, and were sentenced to several months in prison last year before a lower court in Texas granted them bail in October.
The Trump White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention in July, reversing nearly 30 years of precedent under Democratic and Republican administrations.
Friday also ruled bucks November district court decision in Californiawhich gave detained immigrants with no criminal histories the opportunity to request a bail hearing and had implications for noncitizens in detention across the country.
Circuit Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the lone dissent in Friday’s decision.
The elected members of Congress who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act “would be surprised to learn that it also requires two million people to be held without bail,” Douglas wrote, adding that many of the people detained are “spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”
She went on to say that the federal government was ignoring the lawmaking process through DHS’s new immigration detention policy that denies bonds to detained immigrants.
“Because I would decline to call on the government to approve the proposed legislation by executive order, I oppose it,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas’s opinion reflected widespread tensions between the Trump administration and federal judges across the country. Who increasingly have The administration was accused of violating court orders.
US Attorney Pam Bondi celebrated the decision as “a major blow against activist judges who have been 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.