A Cambodian citizen Convicted of aggravated robbery in 1993. A stateless palestinian The man who pleaded guilty to drunk driving and drug offenses in 2018. A ukrainian man Joe fled war with Russia in 2022 and lost his legal status last year when he accidentally drove his UberEats deliveries across the Mexican border. A Cuban man Convicted of child abuse in 2020.
All four had previously been ordered deported from the US and arrested by ICE in recent months. But all four were ordered released by federal judges appointed by President Donald Trump, who concluded that their detention violated constitutional limits. They are among hundreds of immigrants with questionable histories and sometimes sordid criminal records targeted during the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign who federal courts have found illegally detained.
ICE’s campaign to jail thousands of undocumented immigrants with no criminal records and years of ties to the US has sparked a political and legal backlash to the Trump administration’s unprecedented policy of mass detention. But federal judges have routinely found that this second population – immigrants, including some with criminal records, who have been issued final deportation orders but are still in the country – have suffered similar abuses of due process and violations of constitutional rights.
A POLITICO analysis of immigration detention cases found that federal judges have ordered bond hearings and, often, outright release, for more than 400 people detained under these circumstances. And the rebuke has come from judges appointed by every president since Ronald Reagan.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, “President Trump always prioritizes the safety and well-being of the American people. However, some activist judges have deliberately sought to promote the interests of dangerous criminal aliens whom he has ordered released into American communities to the detriment of the public.” “This administration will stop at nothing to uphold the rule of law and protect our country from these dangerous illegal aliens.”
The point is that there is a complex aspect of immigration law that governs the treatment of people issued “final orders of removal” by immigration courts. In some cases, those final orders were issued decades ago but could not be executed because the countries at the other end of the order – China, Russia, Cuba, SyriaIran – has strained relations with the US or generally opposes accepting deported people. In other cases, immigrants are stateless, born in the now defunct Soviet Union or have no ties to any country. And in another category, immigration judges have given credit to deportees’ fears of persecution or torture and granted them protection from being deported to their home countries.
John Hinderaker, Trump-appointed US District Judge in Arizona ordered release A Cameroonian woman was ordered deported but was protected from being deported to her home country due to torture concerns. U.S. District Judge Dominic Lanza, another Arizona-based Trump appointee, recently ordered release A woman from Honduras, who was convicted of sex crimes in 2006 and jailed until 2022, received similar protection from torture in her home country.
Supreme Court has agreed People in this category can be detained for about six months without constitutional concerns – a period in which ICE is expected to arrange for their deportation by securing travel documents and scheduling flights. But once that period ends, a constitutional presumption of independence applies.
In some cases, the Justice Department claims in court that the administration has renewed efforts to arrange long-stalled deportations, restarted negotiations with reluctant countries or Finding alternative “third countries” Willing to accept exiles. For example, the Trump administration has partnered with African countries to receive some deportees who cannot be sent to their home countries. But even here, judges say the administration is often providing wishful thinking rather than concrete evidence of progress.
Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Kyle Dudek said in a recent order, “The government provides no documents, no diplomatic agreements, and no concrete evidence. … Instead, the government offers hope and a placeholder.” “A mere representation by an agency to its lawyers – without any evidence – cannot justify keeping a person locked in a cell.”
The constitutional principles at stake mean that people are considered deportable by the government and the courts – even if they have done so committed crimes From drug trafficking to theft to rape To murder – They can be released from federal custody as long as they complete their criminal sentence.
Judges have often struggled over this issue, noting that immigration detention is merely a step in the civil process ending in deportation, not a punishment tantamount to criminal imprisonment. A judge, an Obama appointee in Louisiana, recently underlined that point A decision released several ICE detainees.
ICE officials, said U.S. District Judge John DeGravelles, “emphasise that ‘no matter how the petitioners paint it, every single one of them was a criminal.’ That’s right – each was convicted of a crime, and each served his sentence. And then ICE itself determined that each should be released into regular, independent civilian lives. “The criminal history of the petitioners is not the issue here.”
Adding to the complexity, many of the people targeted by ICE in recent months were held for six months in detention years or decades ago and released on supervision orders. Yet the Trump administration is arresting them again, holding them for months before judges intervened.
The administration has argued that the six-month limit on detention restarts whenever ICE detains someone with a final deportation order, a position that has provoked controversy among judges. In December, Texas-based Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Charles Eskridge, dismissed that dispute In the case of a man who was ordered deported to Qatar in 2009. But last month, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Wendy Berger in Florida said the strict six-month limit would “offer a ‘permanent get out of jail’ card to any detainee whose cumulative prior detention exceeds six months.”
These cases also open a window to the federal government’s diplomatic relations around the world. For example, Vietnam has been Historically reluctant to return home People who fled to the US before 1995 – a relic of the Vietnam War. And Mexico has done it sometimes Refused to accept people over 60 years of age.
