First Circuit scrutinizes denial of bond hearings for ICE detainees

(CN) — A panel of First Circuit judges on Monday exuded skepticism over the Trump administration's widespread denial of bond hearings for jailed immigrants, likely giving the government an uphill battle in its fight against a class action scrutinizing the practice.

The administration has already lost a judgment in the case, with a federal judge in Massachusetts ruling in December that the administration is unlawfully denying bond hearings to potentially thousands of ICE detainees in New England. The judge blocked the government from continuing to do so.

But the Trump administration claims that ruling is erroneous, arguing to the First Circuit that it has a legal requirement to detain any immigrant "seeking admission" into the country.

It ran into a familiar issue, however: the Laken Riley Act, a controversial 2025 law that greenlights the immigration arrests of noncitizens who are so much as accused of certain crimes. While the law drastically broadens ICE's ability to detain, it also has prompted judges to question how the government can simultaneously claim it has the right to detain any immigrant, regardless of whether they'd been accused of a crime.

"The Laken Riley Act passage concerns me somewhat," U.S. Circuit Judge Lara Montecalvo, a Joe Biden appointee, said. "If [federal law] already subjects applicants for admission to mandatory detention, as you suggest it does, why would Congress then have passed a separate provision just last year subjecting only a pretty narrow set of people who are present in the country without admission to mandatory detention?"

Federal judges around the country have posed the same question, like U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman, a Donald Trump appointee in the Southern District of New York, who raised the issue in November when freeing a 20-year-old Peruvian asylum-seeker.

Government lawyer John Bailey argued Monday that the Laken Riley Act was passed "against the backdrop" of executive inaction on its right for broad arrests and a denial of bond hearings for ICE detainees. But when pressed by Montecalvo, he couldn't provide any legislative history to suggest the executive branch indeed has that right.

It's largely a semantic argument. The government argues anyone without express approval to reside in the United States is "seeking admission" in the country and thus eligible for mandatory detention — without a bond hearing — under federal immigration law.

But the class action plaintiffs, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, say that flies in the face of decades of precedent.

"They cannot 'seek admission' under this statute because they are already present in the United States," ACLU lawyer Adriana Lafaille said of the class members, who were all arrested while already inside the country, not at the border.

Federal immigration law stipulates that if an immigration officer determines that "an alien seeking admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted," then they shall be detained.

U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch was skeptical of Congress' use of the term "seeking admission" in that context.

"If they wanted mandatory detention for every applicant for admission, it would be very easy just not to use the phrase at all," the Bill Clinton appointee noted.

The case's lead plaintiff is a man named Jose Arnulfo Guerrero Orellana, who had been living in the United States for over a decade until he was detained by ICE in 2025 and denied a bond hearing. His lawsuit now covers thousands of other similarly situated detainees across New England.

Monday's three-judge panel, which in addition to Montecalvo and Lynch included Trump-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Joshua Dunlap, didn't issue a ruling following the oral arguments.

Just last week, their colleagues in the Second Circuit ruled against the government's mass immigration detention campaign, finding that depriving detainees of a chance to seek bond raised "serious constitutional questions." But the more conservative Fifth and Eighth Circuits have previously upheld the operation, likely teeing up a significant Supreme Court battle in the near future.