Fourth Circuit rejects Trump’s interpretation of immigrant detention policy

A Fourth Circuit majority ruled Thursday that longtime immigrant residents, in this case a Salvadoran and a Guatemalan who have each lived in the U.S. for over two decades, are entitled to bond hearings before immigration judges, rejecting a July 2025 Justice Department position that they must be mandatorily detained. Judge Nicole Berner wrote that five presidential administrations, including Trump's first, had read the 30-year-old statute the opposite way.

The court is now the ninth circuit to reject the administration's newer interpretation, which treats noncitizens already living in the country the same as those seeking entry at the border. Berner compared the government's theory to arguing a moviegoer who sneaked in and watched half the film is still ‘seeking’ to enter the theater.

Berner noted the government's reading would subject roughly 6 million people to mandatory detention, a scale she said would dwarf even the Geary Act detentions of Chinese immigrants and the internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. The Fifth and Eighth Circuits have ruled the other way, and an attorney for one petitioner said she expects the Supreme Court to eventually settle the split.

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