A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s policy of making many of the immigrants it is trying to deport subject to mandatory detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including those who have lived in the U.S. for years.
A panel of judges from the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals called the policy the “broadest mass-detention-without-bond mandate in our Nation’s history for millions of noncitizens.”
The panel wrote that the Trump administration’s interpretation of mandatory immigration detention would “send a seismic shock through our immigration detention system and society, straining our already overcrowded detention infrastructure, incarcerating millions, separating families, and disrupting communities.”
The ruling creates a judicial divide over the mass ICE detention policy. While most judges across the country have declared the policy illegal, the 5th Circuit and 8th Circuit Courts of Appeals, based in Louisiana and Missouri, respectively, have endorsed the Trump administration’s interpretation of mandatory detention. The 2nd Circuit’s decision applies to Connecticut, New York and Vermont.
Tuesday’s opinion was written by U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph Bianco, an appointee of President Trump, who was joined by Clinton appointee Jose Cabranes and Biden appointee Alison Nathan.
Last year, the Trump administration reinterpreted a 1990s immigration law to disqualify broad groups of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally from having the ability to ask an immigration judge to be released on bond after being arrested by ICE.
Previously, undocumented immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for years were generally eligible for bond hearings and could seek to convince an immigration judge that they should be allowed to fight their deportation outside of a detention center because they were not flight risks or threats to public safety.