US judge throws out immigration board’s ruling endorsing Trump mass detention policy

A federal judge on Feb 18 threw out an administrative board’s decision endorsing the Trump administration’s policy of subjecting

thousands of people arrested during its immigration crackdown

to mandatory detention.

US District Judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California, vacated the decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals, after finding the administration had failed to comply with her earlier order declaring unlawful the underlying policy of denying detainees the chance to seek release on bond.

Her ruling on Feb 18, in a class action lawsuit that covers migrants nationwide, is more sweeping than decisions by hundreds of other US judges holding the policy unlawful and ordering detainees to be freed or given bond hearings.

Judge Sykes, who was appointed by former Democratic president Joe Biden, called the administration’s actions “shameless” and accused it of trying to “continue its campaign of illegal action” by still refusing bond hearings despite her prior ruling.

“Respondents have far crossed the boundaries of constitutional conduct,” she wrote.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Department of Justice, which oversees the board, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Judge Sykes’ ruling means the board’s decision can no longer be used by immigration judges to deny bond hearings, said Professor Niels Frenzen of the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, who represented the plaintiffs.

“We hope that DHS and the immigration courts will now comply with the court’s orders to provide bond hearings to the thousands of non-citizens who have been arrested,” he said in a statement.

Federal immigration law prescribes mandatory detention for “applicants for admission” to the US, while their cases proceed in immigration courts, and they are ineligible for bond hearings.

Bucking a longstanding interpretation of the law, the DHS in 2025 – as part of US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown – took the position that non-citizens already residing in the US, and not only those who arrive at a port of entry at the border, qualify as applicants for admission.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department, issued a decision in September that adopted that interpretation, leading to immigration judges nationally employed by the department to mandate detention.

Judge Sykes declared the DHS policy unlawful in a ruling in December, but stopped short of vacating the board’s decision.

But she said it was clear further relief was needed after Chief Immigration Judge Teresa Riley issued guidance instructing her colleagues that they are not bound by Judge Sykes’ ruling and that they should continue following the board’s decision.

Those immigration judges are employed by the Justice Department.

Judge Sykes, in her decision on Feb 18, criticised the DHS for repeatedly and inaccurately suggesting that operations by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement were limited to targeting criminal non-citizens who were the “worst of the worst”.

“Maybe that phrase merely mirrors the severity and ill-natured conduct by the government,” she wrote. Even though these press releases might contain an inkling of truth, they ignore a greater, more dire reality.” REUTERS