Appeals court split on ICE's mandatory detention policy
Source: Politico
05/05/2026 04:10 PM EDT Updated: 05/05/2026 05:14 PM EDT
A federal appeals court deadlocked over the Trump administration’s bid to lock up the majority of people it is seeking to deport, without an opportunity for release on bond.
The divided panel of the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals splintered over the administration’s novel interpretation of 30-year-old immigration laws, with one judge saying it had subjected millions of people to being detained by ICE without due process, one judge siding with the administration’s view and a third declining to endorse either view.
The opinion’s author, Judge John Lee, a Biden appointee, emphasized that no prior administration believed there was a mass detention mandate in the 1996 law that Trump administration officials have claimed justifies their new policy. And despite the complexities and complicated language of the law, it’s simply implausible that Congress passed a sweeping detention mandate 30 years ago without anyone noticing, the court said.
“It is unreasonable to think that Congress in 1996 intended to subject millions of noncitizens to mandatory detention in the oblique, off-handed fashion that [Trump administration officials] claim,” wrote Lee, a wrote. Judge Thomas Kirsch, a Trump appointee, dissented from the decision, while Judge Doris Pryor, another Biden appointee, declined to endorse the mandatory detention component of Lee’s opinion.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/05/mandatory-detetion-appeals-court-ruling-00906943
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