The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and restore mandatory detention without bond hearings for some migrants arrested inside the United States.
The filing, made public Friday, challenges a May decision by the Cincinnati-based appeals court. That ruling rejected the administration’s interpretation of a decades-old immigration law.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the justices to take the case. He said the issue had become a “critically important question of immigration law” and had generated thousands of detention challenges.
The case centres on whether non-citizens who have already entered the United States illegally can be treated as “applicants for admission.” That label makes detention mandatory while immigration cases move through the courts.
Under the administration’s reading, those migrants cannot seek bond hearings even if they have lived in the country for years.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security adopted that position last year. The Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the U.S. Department of Justice, later endorsed the interpretation in a September decision.
Immigration judges across the country then began ordering mandatory detention in cases covered by the new reading of the law.
The 6th Circuit case involved citizens of Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Guatemala. They had lived in the United States for years before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrested them in Michigan.
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The appeals court ruled 2-1 that the administration misread the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. It also found that denying bond hearings violated due process rights under the Fifth Amendment.
The administration told the Supreme Court that detention prevents migrants from missing hearings and helps ensure removal from the United States. Two other appeals courts have backed the policy, creating a split among federal courts.
The appeal came before the Supreme Court handed the administration two immigration wins on Thursday, including rulings tied to deportation protections for Haitian and Syrian immigrants.
