Photo: Alamy
The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to allow federal authorities to continue holding illegal immigrants arrested in the United States without bail hearings, urging the justices to overturn a federal appeals court ruling that blocked a key part of its immigration detention policy.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed the petition, arguing the case presents a “critically important question of immigration law” that has generated thousands of lawsuits nationwide.
The administration is seeking review of a May 11 decision by a divided three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Lopez-Campos v. Raycraft. The court ruled that illegal immigrants arrested in the U.S. interior are not “applicants for admission” under federal immigration law and therefore are not subject to mandatory detention without bail under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
At issue is a July 2025 memorandum issued by then-acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd M. Lyons that classified all undocumented immigrants as “applicants for admission,” eliminating immigration judges’ authority to conduct bond hearings for that group.
The Board of Immigration Appeals adopted the same interpretation in September 2025, after which immigration judges nationwide began ordering detention without the possibility of release on bond.
Writing for the majority, Judges Eric Clay and R. Guy Cole rejected the administration’s interpretation. The court ruled that the plaintiffs, natives of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who had lived in the United States for years before being arrested by ICE or Customs and Border Protection, could not be held under the mandatory detention statute.
The panel also concluded that denying individualized bond hearings violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. Judge Eric Murphy dissented.
“Detaining aliens who are living in the country after an illegal entry while their removal proceedings unfold prevents those aliens from evading hearings and helps ensure their removal from the United States,” Sauer wrote in the administration’s petition.
He argued that Supreme Court intervention is needed because federal appeals courts have reached conflicting conclusions. The 5th and 8th Circuits have upheld the administration’s interpretation, while the 2nd, 6th, and 11th Circuits have rejected it.
ICE held approximately 73,000 detainees in custody as of January, a record high, and the administration says the no-bail policy is central to that detention framework.
If the Supreme Court sides with the administration, the policy could remain in effect nationwide. If it upholds the lower court’s ruling, immigration authorities would likely be required to provide bond hearings for tens of thousands of detainees, potentially leading to more releases while removal proceedings continue.
