US appeals court rejects Trump’s immigration detention policy

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In a 3-0 ruling on Tuesday, a panel of the New York-based US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the administration relied on a novel but incorrect interpretation of a decades-old immigration law to justify the policy. Writing for the panel, US Circuit Judge Joseph F Bianco, a Trump appointee, warned that the government’s reading “would send a seismic shock through our immigration detention system and society”, straining already overcrowded facilities, separating families and disrupting communities. Lawyers for the Trump administration say the mandatory detention policy is legal under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, passed in 1996.

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But Bianco said the government had made “an attempt to muddy” the law’s “textually clear waters”, arguing that the administration’s interpretation “defies the statute’s context, structure, history, and purpose” and contradicts “longstanding executive branch practice”. Under the Trump administration policy, the Department of Homeland Security last year took the position that non-citizens already living in the US, not just those arriving at the border, qualify as “applicants for admission” and are subject to mandatory detention. Under federal immigration law, “applicants for admission” to the US are detained while their cases proceed in immigration courts and are ineligible for bond hearings.

The Department of Homeland Security has been denying bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country, including those who have been living in the US for years without any criminal history, the Associated Press (AP) news agency reports.

The development has drawn wide international attention, with diplomatic circles watching closely.