The Trump administration wants to make millions of immigrants who entered the United States without legal authorization ineligible for bond hearings. This means they would need to remain in immigration detention as they fight deportation proceedings in court, which can take months and in some cases years.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told NBC News in an email Tuesday that the recently issued guidance “closes a loophole” in immigration law that had long been applied mostly to detain those who had recently arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“All aliens seeking to enter our country in an unlawful manner or for illicit purposes shall be treated equally under the law, while still receiving due process,” the ICE spokesperson wrote. “It is aligned with the nation’s long-standing immigration law.”
The Washington Post first reported about the new ICE memo instructing immigration officials to keep immigrants detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings.”
“I don’t think it’s beyond anyone’s notice that we are starting to see policies to keep people detained and keep people detained longer,” Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told NBC News.
“We’re seeing the administration’s goal of detaining and deporting more people grow,” Dojaquez-Torres added.
The new guidance seems to give immigration authorities broader discretion to detain other types of immigrants — such as those who have lived in the U.S. for decades and have U.S. citizen children, and may potentially have legal pathways to remain in the country.
Bond hearings help detainees show to immigration judges that they “are not a flight risk or a public safety risk,” Dojaquez-Torres.
Under the new policy guidance, “the judge doesn’t even have the power to hear your bond case,” Dojaquez-Torres said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the best person in the world, a judge won’t be able to hear your case… If they are agreeing with DHS’ view.”
In a Tuesday post on X, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said President Donald Trump and his administration plan on “keeping these criminals and lawbreakers off American streets.”
“Now thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill,” which set aside $45 billion to build new immigration detention centers, “we will have plenty of bed space to do so,” DHS wrote on social media.
Rebekah Wolf, director of immigration justice campaign at the American Immigration Council, told NBC News the organization has already received reports from across the nation of some immigration judges who are already “accepting the argument” from DHS and ICE.
“And because the memo isn’t public, we don’t even know what law the government is relying on to make the claim that everyone who has ever entered without inspection is subject to mandatory detention,” Wolf said.
There have also been reports of other immigration judges who have disagreed with the new guidance and have granted a bond hearing since the policy went into effect last week, Dojaquez-Torres said. In these cases, “ICE has appealed and refused to release people in the interim until the appeal has been finalized.”
In the memo, ICE acting Director Todd M. Lyons, who oversees the nation’s immigration detention facilities, wrote that the new policy will likely face legal challenges, The Washington Post reported.
