Appeals Court Blocks ICE No Bond Detention Policy

A divided federal appeals court on Thursday rejected an Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy that allows the agency to detain immigrants arrested inside the United States without bond hearings, upholding lower-court orders that two longtime residents be given the opportunity to seek release. In the 2-1 ruling issued September 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found that a 1996 mandatory detention statute applies to applicants for admission at the border, not to immigrants detained in the country's interior. Judge Nicole Berner, writing for the majority and joined by Judge Barbara Keenan, said the government's interpretation would authorize detention on a scale exceeding some of the gravest civil rights violations in American history. Mass detention of marginalized individuals without due process harkens back to some of the darkest moments in our country's history, Berner wrote, citing the mass expulsion of Chinese people in the 1800s and the internment of roughly 120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II.