In a 10-7 en banc decision, the Fifth Circuit held that the Constitution does not entitle immigration detainees in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to seek release on bond; the Supreme Court will weigh a related question
By Caribbean Television Network (CTN)
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that immigrants held in detention have no constitutional right to a hearing where they can ask to be released on bond — a decision that closes off a key path out of custody for detainees across Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
The ruling came from the full Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which divided 10-7 along the lines of its conservative majority. The court held that the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee — the constitutional promise that the government cannot take a person’s liberty without fair legal process—does not require immigration authorities to give detainees a bond hearing. Reuters reported the decision, and it is posted on the court’s docket.
“To the extent petitioners seek to vindicate a liberty interest to be free from physical restraint in the most abstract sense, they can do so at any moment by agreeing to leave the country,” wrote Judge Cory Wilson, a Trump appointee, in the majority opinion.
The practical effect is immediate for the three states under the Fifth Circuit’s authority. Detained immigrants there lose the ability to go before an immigration judge and argue that they should be let out while their cases proceed — a process that can stretch on for years. Texas and Louisiana hold the largest immigration-detainee populations in the country, so the ruling reaches a substantial share of everyone in federal immigration custody.
An en banc decision, one issued by the full roster of a court’s judges rather than a routine three-judge panel. carries more weight and binds every court in the circuit. The ruling applies to detainees of every nationality held in the three states.
The decision arose from three consolidated cases brought by three longtime residents — two Mexican citizens and a Honduran, according to Reuters. All three, the American Immigration Council said, had lived in the United States for decades after entering without authorization, had no criminal records, and were raising young U.S.-citizen children. The council, which represents them, listed the cases on its docket as Sosnava Rodriguez v. Ortega and two companion appeals.
Their path through the courts had, until Friday, run the other way. Federal district judges had ordered the men released and barred immigration authorities from re-detaining them without a bond hearing. In July, a divided three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit upheld those orders, finding that people held under the government’s mandatory-detention policy have a due-process right to a hearing at which the government must justify holding them within 90 days. The full court then agreed to rehear the matter, set aside the panel’s ruling, and on Friday reversed it — concluding that detained immigrants are entitled to nothing in immigration court beyond what Congress has written into statute. In February, the same circuit had already adopted the administration’s reading of immigration law as requiring that such detainees be held.
A sharp split on the bench and beyond
The majority drew a forceful dissent. Judge Dana Douglas, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, warned of the precedent the court was setting. “Unchecked, executive authority to arrest and detain, indefinitely, echoes fearfully from history,” she wrote.
Lawyers for the detained men condemned the outcome. “This ruling opens the door to more people being locked up for no reason, with devastating consequences for them, their loved ones and their community,” said Ellie Norton, an attorney with the National Immigration Project who represents the three men.
The administration celebrated. James Percival, the general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, called the decision a “big win in the 5th Circuit on mandatory detention for illegal aliens” in a social-media post — using a term CTN does not apply to people in its own reporting.
Friday’s ruling settled only the constitutional question — whether the Fifth Amendment requires bond hearings. A separate and narrower question is now before the U.S. Supreme Court: whether federal immigration law itself requires them. The justices agreed in early October to take up that statutory issue, which has divided the lower courts, in a case that reached them from a conflicting ruling by the Second Circuit.
That split is wide. Most federal appeals courts to consider the matter have sided with detainees seeking bond hearings; the Fifth and Eighth Circuits have backed the administration. Government lawyers have argued that the disagreement is “disrupting the orderly administration of immigration law.” A decision from the Supreme Court could ultimately override the patchwork the lower courts have produced in the Fifth Circuit and elsewhere.
For now, the ruling stands in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The flood of lawsuits from immigrants arguing they are being held unlawfully — filings that have multiplied as Immigration and Customs Enforcement carries out the administration’s mass-deportation push — will continue to test where the limits of detention lie, in the courtroom and in the detention centers themselves.
Source: Reuters
https://ctninfo.com/appeals-court-de…to-bond-hearings/
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