By Safiyah Riddle | The Associated Press
President Donald Trump’s administration could continue to detain immigrants without bond, marking a major legislative victory for the federal immigration agenda and contradicting several recent lower court decisions across the country that have declared the practice illegal.
A panel of judges in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday evening ruled that the Department of Defense’s decision to deny bond hearings for detained immigrants nationwide is consistent with the constitution and federal immigration law.
Specifically, district judge Edith H. Jones wrote in a 2-1 majority opinion that the government correctly interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act by asserting that “unauthorized aliens detained anywhere in the United States are not eligible for release on bond, regardless of how long they have resided within the United States.”
Under the previous administration, most non-citizens with no criminal records who were arrested far from the border had the opportunity to request a bond hearing while their cases were pending in immigration court. Historically, mandatory detention was often given to those without criminal convictions who were not plane accidents, and mandatory detention was limited to those who had recently crossed borders.
“Just because previous Administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority under” the law “doesn’t mean they didn’t have the authority to do more,” Jones wrote.
The plaintiffs in two separate lawsuits 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 plane accidents, their lawyers argued. Neither man had a criminal record, and both were jailed for months last year before a lower Texas court granted them bond in October.
The Trump White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention in July, reversing nearly 30 years of precedent under both Democrat and Republican administrations.
Friday’s decision also overturned a November district court ruling in California, which gave immigrants without a criminal record the chance to request bond hearings and had an impact on non-citizens detained across the country.
District Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the sole dissent in Friday’s decision.
The members of congress who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act “would be surprised to learn that it also required the incarceration of two million people,” Douglas wrote, adding that many of the people incarcerated are “spouses, mothers, fathers and grandparents of American citizens.”
He went on to say that the federal government bypassed the legislative process with the new DHS immigration detention policy that prohibits immigration bonds.
“Because I can decline the government’s invitation to stamp the proposed legislation by executive fiat, I decline,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas’s opinion underscored the widespread rift between the Trump administration and federal judges across the country, who have repeatedly accused the administration of ignoring court orders.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the ruling as “a major blow to the activist judges who have undermined our efforts to keep America safe again and again.”
“We will continue to fight for President Trump’s law and order in the courts across the country,” Bondi wrote on social media X.
