In a 3-0 ruling, the court said the Trump administration misread decades-old immigration law to justify forced detention.
A federal appeals court has rejected the Trump administration’s practice of subjecting most people arrested in the immigration crackdown to mandatory detention without an opportunity to seek release on bail.
In a 3-0 ruling Tuesday, a panel of the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals said the administration relied on a novel but mistaken interpretation of decades-old immigration law to justify the policy.
Recommended stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
In a contribution to the panel, U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph F. Bianco, a Trump appointee, warned that the government’s decision would “shake up the immigration detention system and society,” straining already overcrowded facilities, separating families and disrupting communities.
Trump administration lawyers argue that the detention policy is legal under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, passed in 1996.
But Bianco said the government had made an “attempt to muddy the clear waters of the text” of the law, arguing that the government’s interpretation was “contrary to the context, structure, history, and purpose of the law” and inconsistent with “long-standing executive branch practice.”
Under Trump administration policy, the Department of Homeland Security last year took the position that not only those arriving at the border, but also noncitizens already residing in the United States, qualify as “admission applicants” and are subject to mandatory detention.
Under federal immigration law, “applicants for admission” to the United States are detained while their cases proceed in immigration court and are not eligible for bail hearings.
The Department of Homeland Security is denying bail hearings to immigrants arrested across the United States, including those who have lived in the United States for many years without criminal records, the Associated Press reports.
According to the Associated Press, this is a departure from practice under previous U.S. administrations, where most noncitizens with no criminal history who were arrested far from the border were given the opportunity to post bail while their cases proceeded to immigration court.
In such cases, bail was often granted to those deemed not to pose a flight risk, and forced detention was limited to those who had recently entered the country.
Amy Belsher, director of immigrant rights litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the appeals court’s decision confirmed that “the Trump administration’s policy of detaining immigrants without any process is illegal and unacceptable.”
“The government cannot forcibly detain millions of noncitizens, many of whom have been here for decades, without an opportunity to seek release. This violates the Constitution, Immigration and Nationality Law, and basic human decency,” Belsher said in a statement.
Conflicting decisions set the stage for Supreme Court retrial
The New York court’s decision comes after two other appeals courts ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s policies.
In granting the dissent, Judge Bianco said the commission would break with them and instead work with more than 370 lower court judges across the country who rejected the administration’s position as a misreading of the law.
Divided opinions between the courts raise the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in.
The latest ruling also upheld a New York judge’s order that led to the release of Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian national who was arrested by immigration authorities while driving to work last year after living in the United States for more than 20 years.
“The court was right to conclude that the Trump administration cannot arbitrarily reinterpret the law,” Michael Tan, Barboza’s attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
The Justice Department, which has defended its forced detention policy in court, did not respond to requests for comment.
