The 11th Circuit’s decision deepens a divide among multiple federal appeals courts that have ruled on the issue.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s no-bond policy of detaining illegal immigrants living in the United States while they go through removal proceedings.
A divided three-judge panel for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that the federal government’s interpretation of immigration law does not apply to illegal noncitizens already within the country as opposed to those at the border.
“Simply put, the language that Congress has chosen to use does not grant to the Executive unfettered authority to detain, without the possibility of bond, every unadmitted alien present in the country,” U.S. District Judge Stanley Marcus wrote. “Nowhere in the text, structure, or history of [immigration law] does that reading find steady footing.”
Marcus was joined in the ruling by U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenbaum in rejecting the Trump administration’s interpretation of a specific provision within the Immigration and Nationality Act that was enacted by Congress in 1996.
The law is known as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.
The act requires federal immigration authorities to detain illegal aliens without bond who are seeking unlawful entry into the country. The 11th Circuit said this does not apply to illegal aliens already residing in the United States.
“The question we face today is whether unadmitted aliens found in the interior of the United States are eligible for bond while they go through immigration proceedings. For nearly thirty years, the answer to that question was, for most aliens, ‘yes,’” the court said. “Last year, the Department of Homeland Security took a different view.”
Judge Barbara Lagoa dissented, backing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s policy of detaining without bond any illegal immigrants in the United States—not just at the border. She cast blame on prior administrations for not properly enforcing the law.
“The Executive’s failure to enforce a statute cannot retroactively narrow its meaning,” Lagoa wrote. “If anything, the population’s growth underscores the consequences of non-enforcement rather than the statute’s intended scope.”
The 11th Circuit’s ruling deepens a divide on an issue that’s been supported by some circuits and rejected in others, setting it on a path likely to be taken up by the Supreme Court.
Hundreds of district courts and four federal appeals courts have weighed in, the 11th Circuit wrote.
By Troy Myers
