For decades, an immigrant who had built a life in the United States and was then arrested by immigration agents got a bond hearing. An immigration judge would decide whether the person was dangerous or likely to run, and if not, they could go home to their family while their case moved forward.

The Trump administration ended that in July 2025. On Friday, one of the most conservative federal appeals courts in the country said it can.

The policy

On July 8, 2025, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons sent every ICE employee a memo reclassifying anyone who had entered the country without inspection as an "applicant for admission" — the legal category for someone standing at the border. Under the memo, those people "are also ineligible for a custody redetermination hearing ('bond hearing') before an immigration judge." It didn't matter whether they arrived last month or twenty years ago.

The result, as Verite News and Mississippi Today reported: people who had lived in the U.S. for years could be held in detention indefinitely, with no way to ask a judge to let them out. Since then, more than 80,000 petitions asking for release have been filed in federal courts nationwide. About a quarter of them were filed in the 5th Circuit, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The ruling

The case involved three immigrant fathers in Texas held without bond. In July, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the policy was unconstitutional and that the government must give people arrested inside the country a bond hearing within 90 days.

Ten days later, with no official request from the government, the full court decided to rehear the case. That paused the relief the three men had won.

On Friday, the full court reversed its own panel, 10 to 7. Writing for the majority, Judge Cory Todd Wilson said that immigrants who have been in the U.S. a long time are still "applicants for admission," and so are subject to detention without bond. The ruling says people in ICE detention have no constitutional right to due process.

The seven dissenting judges said constitutional rights, including the right to liberty, belong to every person in the United States. "The Constitution, after all, is supreme, with statutes' needing to conform to its dictates, not the Constitution to statutes," Judge Leslie Southwick wrote.

Homeland Security's general counsel, James Percival, called it a "big win."

Who it reaches

Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi hold more than 40% of everyone in ICE detention. The ruling has far-reaching consequences for the more than 20,000 people held indefinitely in detention centers in those three states, and it applies to people who will arrive in the future as well as those already here. Federal judges there can still grant release on a case-by-case basis, but Rebecca Cassler, the American Immigration Council attorney who represented the three men, said the ruling "would foreclose nearly all of those petitions from being granted on constitutional grounds."

Cassler pointed out that a person on trial for murder gets more protection than this: "Violating the law doesn't take away your constitutional rights." Entering the country illegally is, in most cases, a misdemeanor.

The detention centers are already overflowing. A detainee at the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, said the facility built to hold 2,200 people has been holding more than 2,600 for weeks. It's the same jail where about 100 men put their food on the floor in protest this year after being served bologna, tortillas and sour milk, and staff in riot gear sprayed some of them.

And detention is deadly. On Saturday, ICE confirmed that a 48-year-old man from El Salvador had died at its processing center in Folkston, Georgia — the 60th death in ICE custody since Trump returned to office.

What comes next

So far, the 5th Circuit is one of only two federal appeals courts to uphold the mandatory detention policy. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a similar case from the 8th Circuit, expected early next year.

Until then, judges in other parts of the country have been ordering bond hearings for thousands of people. This summer, about 2,000 detainees a month were being freed after court-ordered hearings. In Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, that door is now nearly shut.

What the record shows

The Trump administration decided in July 2025 that anyone who entered the country without inspection — no matter how many years ago — can be detained with no bond hearing. On Friday the full 5th Circuit upheld that policy 10–7, reversing its own panel, in a ruling that reaches more than 20,000 people held in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Source

Immigrants in ICE detention have no due process rights, 5th Circuit says — Verite News and Mississippi Today, via the Louisiana Illuminator