A federal appeals court in Denver has directed the Trump administration to provide bail hearings for many immigrant detainees in a ruling that will have major implications for hundreds of people held indefinitely in Colorado and across the West.
The restores a 30-year legal interpretation that the Department of Homeland Security had sought to upend last year in its effort to arrest and deport millions of immigrants without proper legal status.
The decision will provide a pathway to temporary release for a wide swath of immigrant detainees who were arrested inside the United States, rather than at the border. They were detained in states under the 10th Circuit’s umbrella — Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico. The ruling will also likely curb the crush of emergency legal requests filed by immigrants seeking release from what has often become indefinite detention at the Aurora detention center.
The court’s ruling adds to a growing pile of legal opinions that have largely — but not completely — rejected the to longtime U.S. residents.
“Adopting the Governmentap interpretation of (the federal law) would pose grave constitutional problems because there is little justification, let alone a strong one, for detaining every one of the millions of unadmitted noncitizens in our country,” Judge Richard Federico wrote in the court’s Tuesday opinion.
The case was filed by attorneys for Rigoberto Santillan Quiroz, who was arrested in Oklahoma last year after nearly two decades in the United States. Because Santillan Quiroz was already settled in the country and was been arrested in its interior, he normally would have been able to request a bail hearing.
But last summer, Homeland Security officials moved to reinterpret federal law. They began treating detainees like Santillan Quiroz as if they had been arrested at the border — and were therefore not eligible to request temporary release.
That practice has been repeatedly challenged in federal court in Colorado, where lower-court judges have overwhelmingly rejected the Trump administration’s reinterpretation.
On Tuesday, the 10th Circuit did that, too. The three-judge panel wrote that the administration’s “novel, contrary position” presented serious constitutional concerns to “potentially millions of noncitizens” and rejected the government’s “interpretive quantum leap.”
Tim Macdonald, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, which was part of the case, hailed the decision Thursday.
“This should guarantee bond hearings for 500, 600, 700, 800 people who are in the Geo detention center in Aurora right now,” he said, referring to the Geo Group, which operates the center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “What we’ve seen from the administration is no end of efforts to try to resist giving people their day in court, or giving them fundamental due process.”
The ruling does not mean every detainee will receive bail, but it would give them the opportunity to argue they pose no flight risk and aren’t dangerous. Still, immigration judges — which hires and fires them — to keep immigrants detained.
In an unsigned statement, a representative for the Homeland Security Department said the agency “strongly disagrees with the Tenth Circuit panel and is confident in its legal position regarding mandatory detention.”
While the ruling will provide relief for many detainees in Colorado and its neighboring states, it does not fully end the debate. While four federal appellate courts have now rejected the Trump administration’s bail policy, two others have sided with the Homeland Security Department.
That sets up an almost-certain U.S. Supreme Court intervention, and the Homeland Security Department said it had already appealed one adverse ruling to the country’s highest court.
Writing for the 10th Circuit, Federico acknowledged that reality.
“We conclude by recognizing again the stakes of this dispute over statutory interpretation,” he wrote. “In our circuit, thousands of noncitizens are likely subject to mandatory detention under the Governmentap newfound statutory reading and policy. Many more legal battles over this policy are currently playing out in courts across the country. Five circuits have already weighed in. Ultimately, only one court, the Supreme Court, can settle this issue once and for all.”
The high court has not yet agreed to take up that case or others addressing the bail question, Macdonald said, though he expected the justices to consider it in their next term.
