The Trump administration’s effort to lock up immigrants indefinitely without giving them a meaningful chance to seek release just hit another major legal roadblock.
In a significant ruling Thursday, a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that immigrants facing prolonged detention are constitutionally entitled to a bond hearing, rejecting the administration’s argument that it can keep them behind bars for the duration of their deportation proceedings without any opportunity to argue for their release.
The decision marks a notable reversal from an earlier ruling by a different panel on the same court, which had sided with the Trump administration just months ago.
At the center of the case is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy issued in July 2025. The directive instructed ICE officers to deny bond to immigrants who entered the country without formal inspection, breaking with decades of federal practice.
Under the policy, those immigrants would remain in detention throughout their removal proceedings unless ICE granted parole—a form of release the administration has used sparingly. In practice, critics argued, that meant people could be jailed for months or even years without ever seeing a judge to challenge their detention.
The policy sparked a flood of legal challenges, with thousands of detained immigrants filing habeas corpus petitions in federal courts across the country.
And judges have largely rejected the administration’s legal theory.
According to a rolling analysis by Politico, federal district judges have ruled in more than 15,000 detention cases since the policy took effect. In over 13,000 of them, judges rejected ICE’s claim that it had authority to impose mandatory detention without bond hearings.
Now the 5th Circuit has joined that growing pushback.
Writing for the majority, Judge Leslie Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, made clear that the administration cannot erase constitutional protections simply by adopting a new interpretation of immigration law.
“Even though the government reinterpreted the meaning of statutory language, the Constitution has not changed,” Southwick wrote, according to Law and Crime.
He emphasized that constitutional due process—not the administration’s reading of federal statutes—controls whether someone can be held indefinitely without a hearing.
The court also rejected the argument that immigrants lose constitutional protections simply because they entered the country without formal admission.
“Entry and residence, not legal admission, dictate the extent of the Constitution’s application,” the opinion states.
The three immigrants at the center of the case had each lived in the United States for more than a decade, raised families here, and accepted the obligations of living under U.S. law. According to the court, those facts entitle them to due process protections under the Constitution.
The panel ordered that immigrants subject to the policy must receive a bond hearing within 90 days of being detained, where a judge can determine whether they pose a flight risk or a danger to the community.
Importantly, the ruling doesn’t prevent the government from pursuing deportation cases. Instead, it says the Constitution requires that people facing prolonged detention have a meaningful opportunity to challenge whether they should remain locked up while those proceedings play out.
The decision also deepens a growing split among federal appeals courts over Trump’s detention policy.
While the 8th Circuit has backed the administration’s position, several other appellate courts, including the 2nd, 6th, 10th, and 11th Circuits, have ruled against it.
For now, the message from the 5th Circuit is straightforward: regardless of how the administration rewrites its interpretation of immigration law, the Constitution still sets the limits on the government’s power to detain people indefinitely.
