Detained immigrants in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi no longer have a constitutional right to ask a judge for release on bond. The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled 10-7 on Friday that the Fifth Amendment does not require the Trump administration to give detained immigrants a bond hearing — not after 90 days, not after a year, not at any point while their removal cases move through the system.
The decision, in the consolidated case Sosnava Rodriguez v. Vergara, binds every federal court in the three Fifth Circuit states. It eliminates the main legal avenue detainees there had to argue that they are neither dangerous nor likely to flee and should be allowed to go home while their cases are decided. The weight of that falls heaviest in Texas and Louisiana, which hold the nation's largest numbers of immigration detainees — people who now stay locked up unless the government itself decides otherwise, or until their cases end.
Judge Cory Wilson, a Trump appointee, wrote for the majority. He accepted that "there is no dispute that Petitioners enjoy the protections of the Fifth Amendment," but held that because the men had never been formally admitted to the United States, "due process does not entitle them to additional proceedings beyond what Congress has provided before they may be detained pending removal." The statute Congress provided — 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) — offers no bond hearing at all. "The Constitution does not entitle them to a bond hearing," Wilson wrote, adding that courts cannot add one: "The Constitution entrusts broad authority to delineate immigration policy, and to design proceedings to effectuate those policy choices, to Congress — not courts."
The majority also answered the question of how long detention without a hearing can last: "so long as removal remains a viable prospect, continued detention, or renewed detention in the case of an alien previously released, does not violate due process." And it named the one route to freedom it says remains open to every detainee: "To the extent petitioners seek to vindicate a liberty interest to be free from physical restraint in the most abstract sense, they can do so at any moment by agreeing to leave the country." Wilson was joined by Chief Judge Jennifer Elrod and Judges Edith Jones, Jerry Smith, Priscilla Richman, Don Willett, James Ho, Stuart Kyle Duncan, Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham. In a concurrence, Judge Ho wrote: "A nation ceases to be a nation if it can't protect its borders."
The three men at the centre of the case are not recent border crossers. Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez, a Mexican national, has lived in the United States without inspection or admission for over twenty-two years; ICE detained him after a traffic stop in December 2025. Miguel Angel Gomez Alvarado, a Honduran national, has lived in the country since 2012 and has a U.S.-citizen child; he was detained after a traffic stop in November 2025. Alejandro Villegas Angel, a Mexican national, has lived in the United States since 2011 and has two U.S.-citizen children; police stopped him in February 2026 for driving without a licence and transferred him to ICE. All three worked and were raising families. Federal judges in the Western District of Texas granted their habeas petitions in February and March, found their detention without a hearing violated due process, ordered them released and barred the government from detaining them again without bond proceedings. Friday's ruling reverses those judgments, vacates the release orders and directs the court's mandate to issue forthwith — meaning the three men can be taken back into custody.
The ruling is the end of a fight the full court picked with itself. In February, a Fifth Circuit panel held in a separate case, Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, that the immigration statute itself makes detention mandatory for people found inside the country who were never admitted — adopting the reading the Trump administration had been pressing as ICE carried out its mass deportation programme and habeas lawsuits flooded the courts. Then in July, a three-judge panel led by Judge Leslie Southwick ruled 2-1 that whatever the statute said, the Constitution did not allow ICE to hold people like these three men for more than 90 days without a hearing to argue for release on bond. Judge Wilson dissented. The full court voted to rehear the case en banc, heard argument on September 24, and on Friday wiped out the July ruling entirely: "We now conclude that Petitioners were not entitled to individual hearings on their dangerousness or flight risk before they could be lawfully detained by immigration authorities pending their removal proceedings."
Seven judges dissented. Judge Southwick, who had written the July decision, wrote the principal dissent, joined by Judges Carl Stewart, James Graves, Stephen Higginson, Dana Douglas and Irma Ramirez. The majority, he wrote, "has constructed an impenetrable wall between the Constitution and these long-term residents, a wall not designed, recognized, or even suggested by the Supreme Court," and the three petitioners "would today have been detained by immigration authorities for an unreasonable time absent the district courts' intervention." Judge Dana Douglas, a Biden appointee, wrote separately that "unchecked, executive authority to arrest and detain, indefinitely, echoes fearfully from history." Judge Catharina Haynes would have recognised a hearing right at least for detainees who have lived in the country more than ten years, have no criminal history and have close American relatives. Under Friday's ruling, none of them gets one.
The administration, whose lawyers argued the case — Drew C. Ensign appeared for the federal authorities — got the rule it asked for. The Department of Homeland Security's general counsel, James Percival, celebrated the result in a social media post: "Big win in the Fifth Circuit on mandatory detention for illegal aliens, a principle codified in 1996 legislation but ignored by the deep state for decades." The department's official account reposted his message.
For the lawyers who represent the detained men, it was the opposite. Rebecca Cassler of the American Immigration Council, who argued the case, called the ruling "an affront to the U.S. Constitution" in a joint statement with the National Immigration Project: "Because of today's decision, that right is hollow for immigrants in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi." Ellie Norton of the National Immigration Project said: "This ruling opens the door to more people being locked up for no reason, with devastating consequences for them, their loved ones, and their community." Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas wrote that people "who have lived in our communities for years, even decades, can now be locked away with no chance to see a judge or ask for bond."
One door remains partly open, and it does not lead to Friday's holding. On October 1, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha, the government's appeal of a Second Circuit decision about which detention statute applies — a question of what Congress wrote, not of what the Constitution requires. The constitutional question the Fifth Circuit decided on Friday is not before the justices in that case. So even a detainee victory at the Supreme Court on the statute would leave Friday's constitutional ruling standing in the Fifth Circuit; and if the justices side with the government on the statute, detained immigrants in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi will have neither a statutory nor a constitutional route to a bond hearing. Other appeals courts have gone the other way — the First Circuit rejected the no-bond position in August — but that helps only detainees held outside the Fifth Circuit. For the tens of thousands held inside it, Friday settled the question the hardest way it could be settled: no judge has to ask whether their detention is necessary, however long it lasts.
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