The Trump administration is systematically locking up immigrants while they contest the government’s attempts to deport them, even if they’ve lived in the United States for decades and have no criminal record.
This indiscriminate mass detention — a dramatic shift in immigration enforcement policy that began on July 8 — has been declared illegal by dozens of federal judges, who have described it as a flagrant perversion of long-standing law, policy and common sense.
But the administration says its reinterpretation of the law is both legal and a key prong of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation strategy. They say no matter how long someone has resided illegally in the country — “for 25 minutes or 25 years” — the law doesn’t just allow, it requires, their detention while awaiting deportation. And they hope this interpretation encourages many to depart the country voluntarily.
The result has been hundreds of frantic lawsuits by immigrants who have been arrested without warning at work, at routine check-ins with immigration authorities or after immigration court proceedings. Immigration lawyers and advocates contend they’re being sent to overcrowded and unsanitary detention facilities.
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Immigrant advocates say the goal is clear: make the process so excruciating that people give up and accept deportation — even if they have meritorious asylum claims or pathways to legal status.
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Immigrants are increasingly turning to federal district courts — which historically have not handled immigration matters — as a last resort, citing violations of their legal and constitutional rights. Their lawsuits have led to dozens of recent rulings from gobsmacked judges who say the administration has violated the law and due process rights and is threatening to do so for millions more. The pileup of decisions is growing daily.
One judge called the administration’s reinterpretation of the law to prioritize detention “radical.” Another said it had resulted in “arbitrary” arrests and turned routine immigration proceedings into an unsustainable “game of detention roulette” in service of Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Another called the administration “willfully blind” to the plain meaning of long-standing immigration laws. Another said the administration’s position “defies logic.”
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In many cases, judges are ordering detainees immediately released from custody, so long as they vow to continue attending immigration court proceedings and remain in contact with immigration officials. They are still likely to be deported, but the judges say they may not be held indefinitely in detention facilities while they await the outcome of their proceedings.
In other cases, judges are requiring the administration to at least give immigrants a chance to seek bond from immigration judges — a fighting chance to win release from ICE custody that the administration has tried to deny.
Department of Homeland Security officials say they are confident the rulings from district courts will eventually be overturned by the Supreme Court and validate their strategy.
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But everything changed on July 8, when Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, issued a memo declaring the Trump administration had reinterpreted these provisions of law. From that point on, Lyons concluded, anyone in the United States illegally — no matter how long — would be deemed “applicants for admission” who are subject to mandatory detention.
By classifying virtually all deportation targets as “applicants for admission,” the administration has attempted to eliminate their opportunity to seek bond. ICE recently got some backup from judges on the Board of Immigration Appeals, an executive branch court that sets policy for immigration courts across the country.
“Aliens … who surreptitiously cross into the United States remain applicants for admission until and unless they are lawfully inspected and admitted by an immigration officer,” the BIA panel ruled.
The ruling is binding on all immigration judges who, in some cases, had been rejecting the administration’s view of mandatory detention. The Justice Department has begun alerting federal judges, case by case, to the BIA’s ruling as it attempts to stave off further defeats.
But the federal judiciary is not bound by the decisions of the executive branch immigration courts. And so far, judges across the country have decisively rejected the BIA’s interpretation of the law.
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