According to a Reuters review of court records, over 4,000 immigrants were unlawfully detained under the Trump administration over the past few months.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek in an email Saturday in response to the report that “President Trump and Secretary Noem are now enforcing the law and arresting illegal aliens who have no right to be in our country, and reversed Biden’s catch and release policy.”
She added: “We are applying the law as written. If an immigration judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period.”
Why It Matters
President Donald Trump has pledged to launch the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. In the past year, immigration enforcement actions have at times swept up U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, and advocates have raised concerns about unlawful detentions and other due-process violations.
The Trump administration and its immigration enforcement policies have drawn heightened scrutiny in recent months, after two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, were fatally shot by federal immigration officers.
Immigrants have filed thousands of federal court petitions challenging their detention, with Reuters reporting more than 20,200 habeas cases since the president took office.
What To Know
As the Trump administration continues to increase ICE detainees, which Reuters puts at around 68,000 this month, immigration lawyers have increasingly filed habeas petitions seeking their clients’ release. Reuters noted that is a 75 percent increase from when Trump took office last January.
Many of the detentions come as the administration has shifted from a longstanding practice under which some noncitizens with no criminal record arrested away from the border could seek release on bond. Often times bond was granted for those not deemed flight risks while they continue to pursue their immigration case in court. Mandatory detention was historically limited to people who recently crossed the border and those with criminal convictions.
Reuters reported that some attorneys have waited right outside immigration court and hearings to quickly file same day habeas claims in an effort to block their client from being moved to a detention center rapidly. Detainees are often quickly transferred and cross state lines, making it difficult to locate individuals at times.
However, the administration scored a legal victory earlier this month after a federal appeals court upheld its sweeping policy of holding large numbers of immigration detainees without access to bond hearings.
In a 2–1 ruling, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals determined the administration had correctly reinterpreted federal immigration law to bar many unauthorized immigrants arrested by ICE from requesting release on bond while their deportation cases proceed.
In at least 4,421 cases since early October, more than 400 federal judges have ruled that ICE was illegally detaining people, according to a Reuters review of court records. The administration has been met with a slew of lawsuits over its immigration policies in addition to emergency motions and petitions seeking detainees’ release.
Over the past year, through the One Big Beautiful Bill, the administration secured major funding for immigration enforcement and detention, which Noem said in July “provides ICE with enough detention capacity to maintain an average daily population of 100,000 illegal aliens and secures 80,000 new ICE beds.” The administration has shown no signs of scaling back its immigration agenda.
What People Are Saying
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek in an email Saturday: “The Trump administration is more than prepared to handle the legal caseload necessary to deliver President Trump’s deportation agenda for the American people.
“No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States. Additionally, it should come as no surprise that more habeas petitions are being filed by illegal aliens—especially after many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations.”
U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston of West Virginia, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote last week, ordering the release of a Venezuelan detainee in the state: “It is appalling that the Government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written.”
Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion that the government correctly interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act, saying “unadmitted aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States are ineligible for release on bond, regardless of how long they have resided inside the United States.”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem said in an X post this month: “For months, activist judges have ordered the release of alien after alien based on the false claim that DHS was breaking the law. Today, the first court of appeals to address the question ruled that DHS was right all along.”
Judge Dana Douglas said in her dissenting opinion in February: “[The majority opinion was] based on little more than an apparent conviction that Congress must have wanted these noncitizens detained—some of them the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”
Daniel McFadden, managing attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in September: “All people in the United States are entitled to due process — without exception. When the government arrests any person inside the United States, it must be required to prove to a judge that there is an actual reason for the person’s detention. Our client and others like him have a constitutional and statutory right to receive a bond hearing for exactly that purpose. Yet the Trump administration is now ignoring that right and jailing people arbitrarily without a hearing. The Fifth Amendment says that no person can be deprived of liberty without due process of law. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that the promise of our Constitution remains a reality.”
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