President Donald Trump’s administration can continue to detain immigrants without bail, marking a major legal victory for the federal immigration agenda and rebutting a series of recent rulings by lower courts across the country that have deemed the practice illegal.
A panel of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday night that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny bail hearings to immigrants arrested across the country is 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 to assert that “unauthorized aliens arrested anywhere in the United States are not eligible for bail regardless of how long they have resided within the United States.”
Under past administrations, most noncitizens with no criminal records arrested outside the border had the opportunity to request a bail hearing while their cases were pending in immigration court. Historically, bail has typically been granted to those without criminal convictions and who pose no flight risk, while mandatory detention has been limited to those who have recently crossed the border.
“The decision of previous administrations to use less than the full range of enforcement powers provided for in the law does not mean they lack the authority to do more,” Jones wrote.
The plaintiffs in two separate cases filed against the Trump administration last year are all Mexican citizens who have lived in the United States for more than 10 years and are not flight risks, their attorneys argued. Neither man has a criminal record, and both were jailed for several months last year before a lower Texas court granted them bail in October.
The Trump administration reversed that policy in July in favor of mandatory detention, reversing nearly three decades of precedent set by Democratic and Republican administrations.
Friday’s ruling also goes against a November ruling by a California district court that gave detained immigrants without criminal histories the opportunity to request a bond hearing and has implications for noncitizens in detention nationwide.
Circuit Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the lone dissent in Friday’s decision.
Elected members of Congress who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act “would be surprised to learn that the law also requires the detention without bail of 2 million people,” Douglas wrote. He added that many of those detained were “spouses, mothers, fathers and grandparents of U.S. citizens.”
She went on to argue that the federal government is overriding the Department of Homeland Security’s new immigration detention policy, which denies bail to detained immigrants.
“Because I would refuse the administration’s invitation to approve its proposed legislation by executive order, I do not agree,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas’s sentiments echo widespread tensions between the Trump administration and federal judges across the country, who have increasingly accused the administration of flouting court orders.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the decision, calling it a “major blow to activist judges who are at every turn undermining our efforts to make America safe again.”
“We will continue to defend President Trump’s law and order agenda in courts across the country,” Bondi wrote on social media platform X.