The ICE detention policy appeals court fight produced another ruling against the Trump administration on Thursday: a divided Fourth Circuit panel held that immigrants who have lived in the United States for years may seek bond hearings while their removal cases proceed. The 2-1 decision rejects ICE’s position that people who entered without authorization can be held without bond as if they were still seeking admission, even after years or decades in the country.
Judge Nicole Berner wrote the majority opinion, joined by Judge Barbara Milano Keenan. The court concluded that Section 1226 of federal immigration law governs the plaintiffs’ cases, rather than Section 1225, the provision the administration had invoked to require detention without bond. The reported immediate outcome is an opportunity for the plaintiffs to ask for release at bond hearings, not an order automatically releasing every person in immigration detention.
What did the Fourth Circuit decide about ICE detention?
According to Politico and Newsweek, ICE changed its interpretation of the law in July 2025. The agency’s new position treated people who entered the country unlawfully as applicants for admission, allowing mandatory detention during removal proceedings even if they had long lived in the U.S.
The Fourth Circuit rejected that reading for people in the plaintiffs’ position. Section 1226 permits bond hearings in the circumstances at issue; Section 1225 was the provision ICE said required detention without one. The majority said the government’s interpretation would create problems across the statute and raise serious constitutional concerns, including the prospect of detention without bond for millions of people.
The case was brought by Oscar Enrique Lopez Garcia and Juan Jose Rivera, whom Newsweek reported had each lived in the United States for decades before ICE detained them in 2025. The government did not argue that either man posed a danger to the community or a flight risk, according to that report.
Why did the court refer to Japanese American internment?
Berner’s opinion warned that detention of marginalized people without due process recalls some of the country’s worst historical episodes. The majority referred to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans and earlier detention of Chinese immigrants under the Geary Act. The comparison was a warning about the scale and due-process consequences of the government’s proposed reading, not a ruling that the present policy is legally identical to wartime internment.
Judge Allison Jones Rushing dissented. She wrote that the fact earlier administrations had not used the asserted enforcement authority did not, by itself, make the Trump administration’s use of it unlawful, Politico reported.
The Department of Homeland Security strongly disagreed with the decision, a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek, and pointed to the department’s request for Supreme Court review in a similar Sixth Circuit case. Appeals courts have issued conflicting decisions on the broader question, and the dispute is expected to reach the Supreme Court. That court would decide the nationwide statutory question; the Fourth Circuit ruling does not itself establish a national rule.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.
