The Supreme Court will decide whether immigrants who entered the United States illegally and are later arrested in the country can be held throughout removal proceedings without access to ordinary immigration bond hearings.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The Supreme Court agreed Thursday to review the Trump administration’s policy requiring the detention of many immigrants arrested inside the United States while their deportation cases proceed, taking up a major dispute that has divided federal appeals courts and generated thousands of legal challenges.
The justices agreed to hear the case after lower courts reached sharply different conclusions over whether federal immigration law permits Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deny bond hearings to people who entered the country without inspection but may have lived in the United States for years before being arrested.
The case reported Thursday by Politico, Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha, arose from a Second Circuit ruling against the administration.
At issue is not whether the federal government can place such immigrants in removal proceedings or detain them initially. The dispute centers on which section of federal immigration law governs their detention and, consequently, whether they can ask an immigration judge to release them on bond while those proceedings continue.
The Trump administration contends that immigrants who entered the country without being formally admitted fall under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A), which requires detention of an “alien seeking admission” who is not clearly entitled to enter.
If the administration’s interpretation is correct, covered detainees generally cannot obtain a conventional bond hearing before an immigration judge. Release instead is largely dependent on the Department of Homeland Security’s narrower parole authority.
Opponents contend that immigrants who crossed the border in the past and were later arrested in the interior are governed by 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), which allows the government to detain a person during removal proceedings but also permits release on bond or conditional parole.
The distinction could affect a large number of people caught in President Donald Trump’s expanded immigration enforcement effort.
A Congressional Research Service analysis said DHS historically treated immigrants already living in the country after entering without inspection as eligible for bond under Section 1226(a), even though immigration law technically classifies people who were never lawfully admitted as “applicants for admission.”
That changed after Trump returned to office.
ICE issued interim guidance in July 2025 directing that immigrants present in the country without having been admitted should generally be treated like arriving immigrants for detention purposes. Under that interpretation, Section 1225 requires them to remain in custody during removal proceedings unless DHS grants parole.
The Board of Immigration Appeals reinforced the policy in September 2025, concluding in Matter of Yajure Hurtado that mandatory detention applied “without regard to how many years” an immigrant had lived in the United States without lawful status.
That shift triggered extensive litigation across the country.
The case now before the Supreme Court involves Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian national who entered the United States without inspection around 2005 and remained in the country for roughly two decades.
According to the Second Circuit’s decision, Barbosa da Cunha applied for asylum in 2016, received work authorization, owned a home and operated a small business before immigration authorities arrested him in 2025 while he was driving to work. He had no criminal history.
An immigration judge initially concluded that the government’s new interpretation subjected him to mandatory detention and prevented the judge from conducting a bond hearing.
Barbosa da Cunha filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court.
A district judge ruled that he should instead be detained under Section 1226(a) and ordered the government either to give him a bond hearing or release him. An immigration judge subsequently granted him bond after determining he was neither a danger nor a flight risk.
The Second Circuit upheld that result in April.
The appeals court concluded that although federal law defines someone who has never been admitted as an “applicant for admission,” Section 1225(b)(2)(A) separately requires that the person be “seeking admission.”
The Second Circuit interpreted that phrase as applying to people presently pursuing lawful entry into the United States, such as individuals encountered at a port of entry or near the border, rather than someone who entered years earlier and was later apprehended in the interior.
The court also pointed to nearly three decades of federal practice in which immigrants in that position generally were processed under the discretionary detention provisions of Section 1226 rather than automatically held without bond.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to reverse that interpretation.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Congress expressly categorized immigrants present in the United States without lawful admission as applicants for admission and that those applicants remain subject to the mandatory detention rules Congress created in 1996.
The federal government has argued that distinguishing between an “applicant for admission” and someone “seeking admission” creates an artificial distinction not supported by the statutory structure.
The disagreement has produced an unusually broad split among federal appeals courts.
As of mid-September, the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits had rejected the administration’s broad interpretation, according to the Congressional Research Service. The Fifth and Eighth Circuits sided with the administration.
The Fifth Circuit concluded that immigrants who entered without inspection remain applicants seeking admission for purposes of the law even after living in the country for extended periods.
That court reasoned that an applicant necessarily is seeking what he or she is applying for and said longstanding administrative practice cannot override statutory language if that practice was based on an incorrect interpretation.
The Eighth Circuit reached a similar conclusion.
Other appellate courts have interpreted the words differently.
The Sixth Circuit, for example, ruled in May that “seeking admission” requires actively pursuing lawful entry through inspection and authorization rather than merely possessing the statutory classification of an applicant for admission. It upheld lower-court orders granting bond-hearing rights to immigrants who had lived in the United States for years before ICE detained them.
Some courts also have raised constitutional concerns about prolonged detention without an individualized opportunity to demonstrate that a person poses neither a danger nor a flight risk.
The Supreme Court does not necessarily need to resolve the broadest constitutional questions to decide the case.
The central statutory issue is whether Section 1225(b)(2)(A) covers people who entered without inspection and were later apprehended well inside the United States, or whether those detainees instead fall under Section 1226(a).
The Supreme Court considered related detention provisions in Jennings v. Rodriguez in 2018, ruling that immigrants who actually fall under Section 1225(b) are subject to mandatory detention until specified immigration proceedings conclude, with limited parole authority available to DHS.
But Jennings did not resolve the question now dividing the lower courts: precisely which immigrants fall within Section 1225(b)(2)(A).
That unresolved issue became much more consequential after the Trump administration changed the government’s detention interpretation in 2025.
The administration says its approach follows the immigration statute Congress enacted and supports its broader effort to ensure that people subject to deportation remain available for removal.
Immigrant-rights attorneys argue that the policy transformed a detention system that historically allowed many long-term residents to seek bond into one permitting potentially lengthy incarceration without an individualized custody hearing.
The American Civil Liberties Union represents Barbosa da Cunha in the Supreme Court litigation.
The dispute also intersects with the Laken Riley Act, enacted in 2025, which expanded mandatory detention for certain immigrants accused or convicted of specified crimes.
Several appellate courts have reasoned that Congress would have had little reason to expand mandatory detention for particular groups if Section 1225 already required detention without bond for virtually everyone who had entered the country without lawful admission.
The Fifth and Eighth Circuits have rejected that reasoning, finding that the statutes can overlap while continuing to serve separate purposes.
The Supreme Court’s intervention now gives the justices an opportunity to establish one nationwide interpretation after months in which detention rights have depended heavily on where an immigrant was arrested.
The Court’s official docket identifies the case as No. 26-104, Philip L. Rhoney, acting director of ICE’s Buffalo Field Office, v. Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha.
The Court’s new term begins in October. An argument date has not yet been announced.
Whatever the justices ultimately decide could reach far beyond Barbosa da Cunha.
A ruling for the administration could establish nationwide authority to keep a broad class of immigrants who entered without admission in detention throughout their removal cases without ordinary bond hearings.
A ruling adopting the competing interpretation would preserve the government’s power to detain those immigrants but generally allow them to seek individualized bond determinations under Section 1226(a).
The case therefore places one of the central legal components of the administration’s expanded immigration enforcement program directly before the Supreme Court: whether immigrants arrested years after entering the country illegally may be treated, for detention purposes, in essentially the same manner as people arriving at the border.
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