Appeals court limits Trump administration immigration detention without bond hearings

A divided 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on July 2 ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot keep migrants in mandatory detention past 90 days without a bond hearing, a ruling that could affect thousands of people held in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The case, Angel v. Mullin, came from three Western District of Texas habeas petitions filed by Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez, Alejandro Villegas Angel and Miguel Angel Gomez Alvarado. The appellate panel was split 2-1, with Judge Leslie H. Southwick writing for the majority and Judge James E. Graves Jr. joining him, while Judge Cory T. Wilson dissented. The court found the three men had lived in the United States for more than a decade, entered without inspection and had never been authorized to remain.

Southwick’s majority held that due process requires a hearing within 90 days and an individualized justification for continued detention without bond, such as dangerousness or flight risk. The court’s earlier February 6 decision in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi accepted the government’s reading of the immigration statute and allowed mandatory detention, but left unresolved whether the Constitution still required a real chance to seek release. Wilson argued in dissent that the majority reduced Congress’s broad authority over immigration, while the majority said the Fifth Amendment’s protections extend to people inside U.S. borders.

The policy fight began after an ICE guidance shift in July 2025, when the agency applied section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act to all applicants for admission, expanding mandatory detention to many people arrested in the U.S. interior. Since the 5th Circuit’s February ruling, district court judges in Texas and Louisiana have ordered bond hearings or release more than 1,200 times on due-process grounds.

The Department of Homeland Security disagreed with the July 2 ruling and remained confident in its legal position.