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BumRushDaShow

(157,338 posts)
Tue Jul 29, 2025, 10:55 AM Tuesday

Immigrants in the US illegally fight the Trump administration's new no-bail policy

Source: NPR

July 28, 2025 11:06 PM ET


A class action lawsuit has been filed challenging the Trump administration's new policy requiring immigrants illegally in the U.S. who are arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remain in detention while fighting their deportation. It's an abrupt reversal of long-standing practice of allowing individuals who are deemed not a flight risk or a public safety threat to be released on bail while their cases move through the immigration court system.

The new policy was outlined in an email to all ICE employees on July 8. The agency said it was using its "extraordinarily broad" authority to change its interpretation of existing law. As a result, even individuals who have been living and working in the U.S. for decades – with deep community ties – fall under the same law as those just recently caught entering illegally, and must remain locked up.

ICE officials say the policy aims to keep America safe by closing "loopholes" that allowed "millions of unvetted illegal aliens" to be released into communities, according to Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. But advocates for migrants are asking a federal court in California to block it.

"It's a misinterpretation of the law," says Matt Adams, legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, one of several groups bringing the class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration. "The statute makes clear that they are entitled to a bond hearing [but] now the agencies are attempting to rewrite the law … and they're adopting this draconian interpretation."

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/07/28/g-s1-79972/immigrants-in-the-us-illegally-fight-the-trump-administrations-new-no-bail-policy



Link to ACLU PRESS RELEASE - Groups Sue Trump Administration Over Stripping Bond Eligibility for Millions of Immigrants

Link to COMPLAINT (PDF viewer) - https://www.aclu.org/cases/bautista-et-al-v-noem?document=Complaint

Link to COMPLAINT (PDF) - https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2025/07/2025.07.28_Dkt-15_Class-Action-Complaint-and-Amended-Petition.pdf
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Immigrants in the US illegally fight the Trump administration's new no-bail policy (Original Post) BumRushDaShow Tuesday OP
There's no misinterpretation of the law Bayard Tuesday #1
It could easily be both. Igel Tuesday #2
Skimmed the law referred to and the bits included by reference. Igel Tuesday #3
Just like DOJ has their OLC "guidance" BumRushDaShow Tuesday #4
The way they phrased the title of the article is awful and physically painful to read. Way too easy to misinterpret. Karasu Tuesday #5

Bayard

(26,169 posts)
1. There's no misinterpretation of the law
Tue Jul 29, 2025, 12:07 PM
Tuesday

They're doing this deliberately.

Somehow, I don't feel threatened by these people being out on bail....

Igel

(37,025 posts)
2. It could easily be both.
Tue Jul 29, 2025, 03:32 PM
Tuesday

You know what the law's been interpreted to say, you decide to revise that interpretation, and when the courts strike it down you shrug as if to say, "Worth a shot."

That's been used in a number of instances this century.

Igel

(37,025 posts)
3. Skimmed the law referred to and the bits included by reference.
Tue Jul 29, 2025, 03:42 PM
Tuesday

Don't see "bond hearing" explicit anywhere in there. But I skimmed and maybe I overlooked it or it was found between a ";" and an overt word.

But the repeated references in 8 USC 1229a about an immigrant's inability to be there so videoconferencing hearing proceedings, being tried in absentia, etc., etc., rather seems to imply that there's a reasonable expectation under *that* bit of the statute that there's some say to spring them from detention.

Otherwise, the claims that the argument being made is completely out of the blue and unheard of just means the lawyer self-siloed or was young or wasn't paying attention years ago. This interpretation of the law has been boilerplate in even well-known and fairly mainstreamed RW publications going back at least to Obama's first term, I just haven't seen in the more centrist or left-leaning publications, even to point at it and laugh. By "centrist" I mean those typically rated as fairly center, NYT and WaPo.

The claim got a rather public airing and counterargument at the time: The executive branch simply did not have the funds to detain all the immigrants that the law (seemed? to have) called for, the counter went, so it was utterly necessary, inevitable even, "prosecutorial discretion" not to detain them. This wasn't a principled legal argument, but an argument based on resource allocation, sometimes ending with a moderately snarky line to the effect that if you want that bit enforced, properly fund the executive branch to be able to do that. Like DAs who don't prosecute very low level crimes because all their staff are busy prosecuting important crimes, not of minor disturbances to property but violence, large thefts, that kind of thing.

BumRushDaShow

(157,338 posts)
4. Just like DOJ has their OLC "guidance"
Tue Jul 29, 2025, 04:05 PM
Tuesday

(and they have many of these types of "policy guidelines" for staff), it's possible that ICE had similar operations manuals for how to handle certain situations. It wouldn't explicitly be considered "the statute" but it would set out processes and procedures for what the staff would or could do within the framework of the statute.

I know my agency had "Guidance Manuals" for each of the programmatic offices and those were maintained and updated under strict "change control" procedures when revisions occurred.

Karasu

(1,706 posts)
5. The way they phrased the title of the article is awful and physically painful to read. Way too easy to misinterpret.
Tue Jul 29, 2025, 05:05 PM
Tuesday
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