Justices take up ICE mandatory detention policy

The Supreme Court agreed to review whether the Trump administration can apply mandatory detention, without bond hearings, to immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years, not just those caught entering the country. The case centers on Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian man detained in Massachusetts after more than a decade in the country, who was ultimately released after New York courts and the Second Circuit ruled he was wrongly denied a bond hearing.

A July 2025 ICE memo reclassified anyone who entered without formal admission, including people paroled into the country, as subject to mandatory detention regardless of how long they'd lived in the U.S. The Fifth and Eighth Circuits have sided with the administration while the Second, Sixth, and 11th have ruled for immigrants, leaving a split the justices will now resolve.

The ACLU, representing challengers, says lower courts have repeatedly rejected the government's reading of the statute; an American Immigration Council fellow called the stakes among the most consequential in a generation of immigration law, warning of detention at a scale unseen since Japanese internment.

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