The Supreme Court said Thursday it has agreed to take up a case challenging the Trump administration’s claim that it can detain migrants without having to give them a bond hearing even if they’ve been living inside the country for years.
The mandatory detention policy is critical to President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Experts say that if illegal immigrants are detained, they can be deported relatively quickly. But if they’re released from custody, it becomes much tougher to boot them.
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Migrants arriving at the border have long been subject to mandatory detention, but past administrations treated those already in the interior differently.
The Trump administration, though, said the law allows the migrants to be treated the same as new arrivals, since they were never formally admitted.
Lower courts, for the most part, have disagreed.
A tidal wave of rulings, from both Republican and Democratic appointees to the bench, said it made no sense to consider a long-time illegal immigrant as still being an “applicant for admission,” which is the term the law uses.
The Justice Department countered that it was even stranger to reward those who have evaded the law even longer.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which argued the case in lower courts, said 90% of judges considering the issue have ruled the government’s interpretation wrong.
“Try as it might, the government cannot twist the law to detain immigrants for months or even years on end without a bond hearing. Not only is it cruel and inhumane; it is unlawful,” said Michael K.T. Tan, deputy director of the ACLU’s immigrant rights division.
The case before the justices involves Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian who sneaked into the U.S. in 2005. He applied for asylum in 2016 and was granted a work permit while that was pending.
Homeland Security arrested him in 2025 and, in immigration court, charged him with removability, which is a civil deportation proceeding.
The immigration judge ordered him held in detention under the administration’s new interpretation of the law. But Mr. Barbosa da Cunha got a federal district judge to disagree and order him granted a chance at bond — which he won.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower judge’s ruling, one of eight circuits to rule against the government on similar cases. Two circuits have sided with the administration on the question.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer had raised the case to the justices but argued in a brief that they should put it on hold and deal with a similar case out of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. Sauer said that case more squarely presented issues with both the law and broader constitutional claims.
That case is still pending on the court’s docket.
It takes at least four justices’ agreement to hear a case.
The justices also announced Thursday that they will hear a religious liberty case that could determine how much churches and other houses of worship must bow to local land-use rules.
The Missionaries of St. John the Baptist, a group of Catholic priests, wanted to build a grotto with a shrine to the Virgin Mary next to its church in Park Hills, Kentucky. It won a variance from local officials to proceed with construction.
But the state’s Supreme Court said the size of the grotto violated local zoning laws, and rejected the priests’ defense that its religious practice trumped those laws.
At issue is the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, passed in 2000, which protects houses of worship from unfair zoning and landmarking laws.
The priests said the law should guarantee them the right to build, as the shrine is carrying out a religious mission. And they said building it next to their church, rather than in another location, is crucial to that mission.
The high court also announced that it would take a case about military veterans’ retirement pay and how it is handled in some divorce cases.
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