The Supreme Court just took up one of the biggest fights in President Trump's immigration crackdown: whether immigrants who entered the country illegally can be held without ever getting a bond hearing.
Since returning to office, the administration reinterpreted a 1990s immigration law to require mandatory detention — no hearing, no bond — for people in the country illegally. Detention numbers exploded, from just under 38,000 at the end of the Biden administration to more than 65,000 this past summer, according to CNN. The administration says the split between appeals courts has created an "unworkable patchwork" that is "disrupting the orderly administration of immigration law," with thousands of habeas petitions flooding the courts.
The test case is Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha — a Brazilian man authorities say entered illegally two decades ago, applied for asylum in 2016, and has never been charged with or convicted of a crime. Most appeals courts to consider the policy have ruled it violates federal law, and the ACLU — representing the plaintiffs — says "millions of noncitizens could be affected" by the government's reading. Now the justices will settle it once and for all.