The Trump administration wants to make millions of immigrants entering the United States without legal authorization are not eligible for bond audiences. This means that they would have to remain in immigration detention while fighting deportation procedures in court, which can take months and in some cases years.
A spokesman for the United States immigration and customs control told NBC News in an email on Tuesday that the recently issued orientation “closes a escape” in the immigration law that had been applied for a long time mainly to stop those who had recently reached the border between the United States and Mexico.
“All foreigners seeking to enter our country illegally or for illicit purposes will be treated equally under the law, while they still receive due process,” the ICE spokesman wrote. “It is aligned with the long immigration law of the nation.”
The Washington Post first reported on the new ice memorandum that instructed immigration officials to keep immigrants detained “for the duration of their elimination procedures.”
“I don’t think it’s beyond the notification of anyone we are beginning to see policies to keep people arrested and keep people detained for longer.” Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, an advisor to practice and policies of the American immigration lawyers, told NBC News.
“We are seeing the objective of the administration to stop and deport more people,” added Dojaquez-Torres.
The new guide seems to give immigration authorities a greater discretion to stop other types of immigrants, such as those who have lived in the United States for decades and have citizen children of the United States, and can have legal routes to remain in the country.
Bond hearings help detainees to show immigration judges that “they are not a risk of escape or a risk of public security.” Dojaquez-Torres.
According to the new policy guide, “the judge does not even have the power to listen to his bond case,” said Dojaquez-Torres. “It doesn’t matter if you are the best person in the world, a judge will not be able to listen to your case … if they agree with the opinion of the DHS.”
In a Tuesday in X, the United States Department of National Security said that President Donald Trump and his administration plan to “keep these criminals and breakwater out of the US streets.”
“Now thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill”, which reserves $ 45 billion to build new immigration detention centers, “we will have a lot of space in bed to do it,” DHS wrote on social networks.
Rebekah Wolf, director of the Immigration Justice campaign of the American Immigration Council, told NBC News that the organization has already received reports from all over the country of some immigration judges who are already “accepting the argument” of the DHS and the ICE.
“And because the memorandum is not public, we do not even know what law the government is depending on to affirm that all those who once entered without inspection are subject to compulsory detention,” Wolf said.
There have also been reports from other immigration judges who have not agreed with the new guide and have granted a bond hearing since the policy entered into force last week, said Dojaquez-Torres. In these cases, “ICE has appealed and has refused to free people in the interim until the appeal has been completed.”
In the Memorandum, the interim director of ICE Todd M. Lyons, who supervises the immigration detention facilities of the nation, wrote that the new policy will probably face legal challenges, Washington Post reported.
