Update: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
A panel of federal judges heard oral arguments Wednesday in a case that will determine whether the Trump administration’s policy mandating detention for people without permanent legal status, and denying them the chance to appeal for their release while their cases wind through the immigration system, is constitutional.
The case in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals arose out of long detentions in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Michigan and Ohio that advocates said violated the detainees’ due process rights.
Arguing for the government, Department of Justice Senior Counsel Benjamin Timothy Hayes told Chief Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., along with Judges Eric L. Clay and Eric E. Murphy, that the mandatory detention policy coheres with existing laws.
"Statute mandates detention without bond of aliens who cannot show that they are entitled to be admitted, regardless of how long they are in the country,” he said during opening arguments, suggesting that the judges adopt a decision in line with a ruling last month from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That decision gave the Trump administration broad approval for immigration enforcement.
“Unadmitted aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States are ineligible for release on bond, regardless of how long they have resided inside the United States,” circuit judge Edith H. Jones wrote in a 2-1 opinion in that case
In a question from the bench about whether mandatory detention posed a “due process problem” since that argument would allow “people to be subject to detention with no endpoint,” Hayes responded that the endpoint was a determination in the detainees’ immigration cases. “If the removal proceedings were over in a week, I don't think anyone would say that that raises the due process [question].”
He suggested the case was focused on receiving bond hearings, in which detainees can ask a judge to release them while their immigration cases play out, and not the duration of detention. Trump administration policy has denied bond hearings for many immigrants, leaving them with no chance for release until the government reaches a final determination on their immigration status.
Hayes suggested that the Trump administration’s policy of detaining people without permanent legal status would serve as a deterrent to immigration outside of legal channels.
Without the threat of detention, he said, people “will necessarily just try to evade inspection by immigration officers and bypass the entire inspection regime, because that's what the incentive structure of their interpretation encourages.”
The 11 people who are named in the case were detained for months before they were granted bond by federal court judges. During that time, many of them faced adverse circumstances including being denied prescription medication and losing employment.
My Khanh Ngo, an attorney with the ACLU of Michigan, who is part of the team of lawyers that brought the case, told judges that detention for people who are within the country was meant to be used in limited instances, such as people who have a history of criminal activity, are deemed a flight risk, or have received final orders of deportation.
Detention should not be a part of the kind of “incentive structure” presented in the government’s argument, Ngo said, and using the law to discourage immigration by people outside the U.S. does not follow from the law passed by Congress.
“This is not about rewarding people with bond hearings,” she said, adding that detention was “the tool that Congress gave to the government to deal with recent border crossers, but what it did not do was say, ‘You must lock up millions of people,’” including many who have long histories in the U.S.
“We're talking here about people like our petitioners who are longtime residents,” she said, referring to the 11 people who are a part of this case. “They've been here for years, if not decades. Several of them came as children, two as young as 11 months old,” she said.
Ngo added, “They have families here. They have jobs [and] no criminal histories.”
Original post: Monday, March 16, 2026
A federal appeals court is set to hear arguments in a case challenging the Trump administration’s policy requiring many immigrants to remain detained while their immigration cases move forward.
The case will be argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit on Wednesday, March 18.
Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union argue the policy violates immigrants’ due process rights by denying them the opportunity for a bond hearing.
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Last summer, the Trump administration shifted to mandatory detention for many immigrants, ending a decades-long practice that allowed people to be released on bond while their immigration cases played out. Under the new approach, immigrants can be held in detention until their cases are resolved or they are deported, even if they have no criminal record or have pending asylum claims.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 11 immigrants detained under the policy. Most of them live in Michigan, many for years.
The lead plaintiff, Jose Contreras-Cervantes, came to the U.S. when he was 14, according to the ACLU. The father of three young children was being treated for cancer when he was detained in August, 2025. A judge ordered his release in late Oct.
A senior attorney with the ACLU, Miriam Aukerman, said the policy unlawfully keeps people in custody without giving them the chance to argue for release.
“I think that is blatantly illegal and it’s going to result in the needless detention of probably millions of people. It is a huge abuse of federal power," Aukerman said.
Federal judges in Michigan and elsewhere have ruled that the policy violates due process rights, but the administration is appealing those decisions.
Attorneys for the federal government argue immigrants should remain detained until their cases are resolved or they are removed from the country.
Advocates on both sides say the dispute is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the names of the attorneys who argued before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.
