A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration cannot jail immigrants without bond, rejecting a policy that would have turned mass detention into the broadest no-bond mandate in the nation’s history for millions of noncitizens. The unanimous ruling from a panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City puts a legal brake on a deportation machine that has been denying bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country, including people who have lived in the U.S. for years and have no criminal history.
Who Gets Locked Up
The policy under challenge came from the Department of Homeland Security, which has been denying bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country. Under the Trump administration’s approach, people who were previously able to ask an immigration judge for release while their cases moved forward were instead treated as if they had just arrived at the border. The result has been mandatory detention for people who, in earlier administrations, were often granted bond if they were not considered flight risks.
The court said the government’s novel interpretation of the immigration statute defies its plain text. Judge Joseph F. Bianco wrote for the panel, which included Judges Alison J. Nathan and Jose A. Cabranes, that the government’s reading of the 1996 law defies the plain text of the law, its purpose and its history. The panel also noted that Congress had set up a tiered system for immigration cases based in part on how long an immigrant had been in the country.
The Human Cost of the Policy
The case before the court involved Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a man from Brazil who entered the U.S. around 2005, applied for asylum in 2016 and was granted work authorization while his application was under review. He has never been arrested or charged with a crime, owns his own home in Massachusetts where he lives with his wife and two U.S. citizen children, and runs a small construction business. He was arrested on an administrative warrant in September 2025 and placed in removal proceedings, then filed a habeas petition after an immigration judge found he was subject to mandatory detention.
Bianco wrote that the mandatory detention of noncitizens like Barbosa da Cunha for a substantial period of time would raise serious constitutional questions, especially because the government has failed to explain how it would bear a reasonable relation to any legitimate, non-punitive purpose. That is the language of the system trying to dress up confinement as administration while people lose their freedom, their work, and their families are left to absorb the damage.
The new approach has also strained the federal courts, with judges across the country facing more than 30,000 lawsuits from immigrants locked up under the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Left with no way to request bond in immigration court, many immigrants have turned to the federal courts instead, requesting bond through habeas corpus petitions.
What the Authorities Say
Attorneys for the Trump administration say the mandatory detention policy is legal under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act passed in 1996. That law streamlined the process to deport people who were newly arriving in the U.S. without permission, but immigrants who were already in the country were still allowed to seek bond from an immigration judge under a different law. That changed in July, when Todd Lyons, acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said all immigrants targeted for deportation would be treated the same way as new arrivals.
The 2nd Circuit ruling does not end the fight. Panels on the 8th and 5th circuit courts have already upheld the policy put in place by President Donald Trump’s administration last July, and the case now sets the stage for a possible U.S. Supreme Court appeal. The legal machinery keeps grinding upward, but the immediate issue remains the same: whether the state can cage millions of noncitizens without giving them a chance to ask for release.
Amy Belsher, director of Immigrants’ Rights Litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said, “Today’s ruling rightly affirms that the Trump administration’s policy of detaining immigrants without any process is unlawful and cannot stand.” She said, “The government cannot mandatorily detain millions of noncitizens, many of whom have lived here for decades, without an opportunity to seek release. It defies the Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and basic human decency.”
In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, the Department of Homeland Security pointed to a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling upholding the mandatory detention policy, and said Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin “are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe.” DHS also said, “Regarding decisions from federal courts about mandatory detention, judicial activists have been repeatedly overruled by the Supreme Court on these questions. ICE has the law and the facts on its side and will be vindicated by higher courts.”