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Judge Orders Nationwide Bond Hearings for Migrants, Strikes Down New Mandatory-Detention Policy

A federal judge has ruled that migrants who were living in the U.S. when detained must be offered bond hearings before being subject to mandatory detention. Judge Sunshine Sykes certified a nationwide class, finding that a July policy denying such hearings violated due process. The order applies broadly to detainees across the country; about 65,000 people were in immigration detention last week.

04:31 AM, 11/26/2025Politics
Judge Orders Nationwide Bond Hearings for Migrants, Strikes Down New Mandatory-Detention Policy

By Daniel Wiessner

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the U.S. government cannot subject thousands of migrants to mandatory detention without first giving them an opportunity to seek release on bond. The decision requires that migrants who were already living in the United States when detained be offered bond hearings while their deportation cases proceed.

U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes, sitting in Riverside, California, certified a nationwide class of individuals who were living in the United States at the time of their detention and are therefore entitled to a hearing to determine whether they can be released on bond. Her ruling extends relief beyond the individual cases decided by other courts and applies to similarly situated detainees across the country.

Sykes previously found that a policy announced in July—which denied bond hearings to migrants detained during domestic enforcement operations—was unlawful. In Tuesday's order she concluded that the policy, which reinterpreted who qualifies as an "applicant for admission" under federal immigration law, unlawfully deprived a class of detainees of due process.

"Such common injury can be resolved in a single stroke upon the determination that the new policy is in violation of (migrants') due process rights," Judge Sykes wrote.

Government figures show about 65,000 people were held in immigration detention in the U.S. as of last week. The Department of Justice had argued that migrants' differing circumstances required case-by-case review, but Sykes found that the denial of a bond hearing was a shared injury that could be addressed collectively.

Under long-standing interpretations of federal immigration law, so-called "applicants for admission"—typically noncitizens arriving at a port of entry—may be subject to mandatory detention while their cases move through immigration courts. In July, the administration adopted a broader reading, asserting that noncitizens already residing in the U.S. could also be treated as applicants for admission. Sykes rejected that interpretation, saying the statute distinguishes between existing residents and new arrivals.

The U.S. Department of Justice and lawyers for the four migrants who brought the lawsuit did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Judge Sykes was appointed by President Joe Biden.

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