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Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday vacated a decision made earlier this month, which had required U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to provide bond hearings within 90 days to immigrants arrested within the country.
A panel of three judges from the conservative court, which covers Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, had held July 2 that unjustified detention for an indefinite period would violate the Constitution. The decision on Monday came after ICE and Department of Homeland Security officials appealed that judgment, petitioning the full appeals court to rehear the case. The court will consider the case in September.
More than 61,000 immigrants held across the U.S. have petitioned federal courts for their release after ICE stopped providing bond hearings to those it arrested within the country, which was the norm for decades. Only two federal appeals courts – the 5th Circuit and the 8th Circuit, which covers Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota – have upheld the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy.
More than 600 of the habeas corpus petitions are from detainees held in Mississippi, nearly all of which are sitting on the desk of Judge David Bramlette III. He has yet to decide any of these petitions based on their merits. As a result, hundreds of detainees have been held indefinitely, some for more than a year.
Monday’s decision will effectively keep them in limbo.
