IMMIGRANT DETENTIONAs Trump Administration Pushes for More Detentions, Immigrants’ Options for Parole Shrink
Despite immigration detention numbers receding from recent highs and even as conservative judges are opting to release more detainees by rejecting President Donald Trump’s mass detention policy, tools for detainees to seek release from ICE mandatory detention policy or appeal cases are disappearing.
Despite immigration detention numbers receding from recent highs and even as conservative judges are opting to release more detainees by rejecting President Donald Trump’s mass detention policy, tools for detainees to seek release or appeal cases are disappearing.
A proposed federal rule will make it harder to appeal immigration cases nationally. And a federal appeals court ruling stops immigrants from requesting release on legal grounds in three Southern states if they entered the country illegally, no matter how long they’ve been here.
As of late January, there were 70,766 people in immigration detention, up from about 40,000 at the start of the second Trump administration, with about 74% having no criminal convictions.. (The number of detainees declined to 68,289 as of Feb. 7 amid increasing releases of immigration prisoners by federal judges, even many appointed by the Trump administration.)
This month’s court ruling in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which affects immigrants held in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, is a victory for a new Immigration Customs and Enforcement policy set last July. It requires detention without bond for many immigrants who arrived at the border without permission, even if they had been paroled with a court date.
It comes as habeas petitions from people claiming illegal detention skyrocket — from a few dozen a week in early 2025 to thousands a week recently, according to a ProPublica report. The largest numbers of cases are in Texas, California, Minnesota, Florida and Georgia.
Rekha Sharma-Crawford, an immigration attorney in Missouri and second vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she believes hundreds of other federal judges disagree with the Feb. 6 appeals court order.
‘Mandatory Detention’
The ruling found that a landmark Clinton-era immigration law, called The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), “unambiguously provides for mandatory detention” for people who crossed the border illegally.
A dissenting judge, Dana Douglas, wrote that drafters of that law ”would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people. For almost thirty years there was no sign anyone thought it had done so.”
Sharma-Crawford said the ruling would likely be challenged, but that it may be too late for people who may give up under the stress of detention, and agree to deportation.
