In violation of Trump’s policy, federal judges are releasing immigrants from mandatory prison time

Gilberto Pacheco was driving to his construction job in California when he was pulled over in what court documents called a “traffic stop” in January. He wasn’t charged with any crime, not even a traffic violation, but he spent months in jail without bail because he illegally came to the United States from Mexico more than 30 years ago.

Cases like Pacheco, who sought legal status because he has three U.S. citizen children, are what the Supreme Court must consider when it rules next year on the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policies.

The justices are expected to hear the case as early as October, after the U.S. attorney general issues a ruling required resolution of conflicting judgments of appellate courts in this case.

The Trump administration’s policy requires detention without bail for anyone who crosses the border illegally and is used to pressure immigrants to voluntary departure escape from sometimes miserable conditions.

For now, many U.S. district judges are questioning the idea that immigrants should be jailed indefinitely at the whim of the executive branch.

Stateline reviewed every immigrant habeas petition decided in a single day – June 16 – across the country to see the judicial opinion. A habeas case is an immigration detainee’s application to a judge for a legality review of his imprisonment and order a bail hearing or release.

Of the cases that were decided that day, judges immediately released detainees or ordered bail hearings 142 times and denied them only 36 times. Many judges, even Republican-appointed ones, have argued that indefinite detention is unconstitutional.

He was one of such judges U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison, who heard the Pacheco case.

After being picked up in California, Pacheco was held in Houston and filed a habeas petition in Texas. Ellison ruled that Pacheco’s month-long detention was a civil rights violationS. He ordered Pacheco’s immediate release.

“Given the seriousness of this ongoing unconstitutional deprivation of liberty, the Court finds that immediate release from custody is necessary,” Ellison wrote.

He wrote that he recognizes that Trump’s policy applies to Pacheco and that it has been upheld by the Fifth Circuit The Court of Appeals that governs Texasbut he said he would let the man go anyway.

“The Due Process Clause does not allow the government to “detain any person who is not a citizen of the United States, regardless of how long he or she actually resides in the United States, for any period of time, without any individualized justification.” [merely because] the person initially entered the country without lawful entry,” Ellison wrote, citing in part a 2003 Supreme Court ruling. ruling.

Ellison is the Democratic nominee in Bill Clinton’s administration, but judges in both parties, including Trump appointees, have ordered bond hearings for immigrants and found Trump’s policies unconstitutional. They included judges from states where appellate courts had already upheld the policy.

Many judges go beyond bail hearings and directly order release, like Ellison he did. In some situations, judges will pause the hearing to make sure a release will occur or the bail hearing will be fair.

Few immigrants receive bail hearings because of this policy, which makes the only recourse is to challenge a court order, he said Xin Tian, ​​a lawyer representing an immigrant who was fired on June 16 in a California case. His client’s case was among those handled by Stateline.

“Only individual reservationour decision to release is to file for a writ of habeas corpus,” Tian wrote in an email to Stateline. “Fortunately, federal judges follow the Constitution and will issue such a writ, which will result in an outright dismissal. Other than that, there are virtually no other ways to obtain a release.”

Trump’s Texas nominee, U.S. District Judge Jason K. Pulliam, ordered the release of five inmates in one day, calling the detentions “unlawful” and ordering their immediate release pending legal proceedings. In each case, he wrote that the detainee “had no known criminal history, was compliant with his release conditions, and had no indication of a flight risk or danger to the community.”

He admitted in court documents that he made such rulings even though the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling for Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi found that mandatory detention was legal in those cases.

A Stateline review found that President Joe Biden’s Utah appointee, U.S. District Judge Ann Marie McIff Allen, was one of the few judges who agreed with the Trump administration’s policies.

McIff Allen denied a request for a bond hearing from a Venezuelan man who came to Texas in 2024 to seek asylum. He arranged an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection through the official mobile app and then settled in Florida.

His immigration case was still pending when the Trump administration revoked his parole and arrested him in May. The man “was not entitled to immediate release or a bond hearing,” McIff Allen ruled, acknowledging that “some district courts have decided this issue differently.”

The detention was legal under a Trump administration policy that interprets immigration law to mean that all immigrants who arrived illegally can be treated as if they were at the border “seeking admission” to the country.

Stateline found only seven cases in which judges looked favorably on the administration’s policy of mandatory detention when habeas cases were denied. In addition to the ruling by a Biden appointee in Utah, there were six rulings involving Trump judicial appointees: four in New York and one each in Puerto Rico and Texas.

U.S. District Judge Raúl M. Arias-Marxuach, a Trump appointee, refused to release Marcelo Jerez, a Dominican native living in Puerto Rico with his U.S. citizen wife and a infirmed 1-year-old child who required his lend a hand in monitoring and care.

“The heart of this case has been the subject of countless lawsuits across the country, with diligent judges reaching divergent answers,” Arias-Marxuach wrote.

But relatively few of the judges involved in the Stateline review found the mandatory detention policy valid: Four of the remaining six cases pending as of the date that found it, other than the Utah case, were rejected by one judge, Trump-appointed Judge John L. Sinatra, in the Western District Court of New York.

Sinatra wrote in one of the cases on behalf of a Venezuelan who was allowed into the country on parole in 2024 that such people should be treated as if they were still at the border “seeking admission” and faced mandatory detention and should not acquire the constitutional rights of someone who is already in the United States and has legal status.

“How could it be otherwise? If he had not sought admission, he would have resigned and already left,” Sinatra wrote in his decision.

David Wilson, a Minnesota immigration lawyer who serves on the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s immigration court committee, said the criminal records of people detained for immigration purposes are a bone of contention among judges. He said there was widespread disagreement over whether they should be held indefinitely without bail, even if a U.S. citizen in the same circumstances would be released on bail in a criminal court.

“The kind of lingering question is, how long is too long for people with a criminal record? Some districts have come out and said, ‘It’s not very long because your criminal activity is what it is, you’re just stuck. If you want to end it, stop fighting your case,'” Wilson said.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at: thenderson@stateline.org.