The Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear a case that will determine whether the Trump administration can detain millions of immigrants without bond hearings.
At issue is the Department of Homeland Security’s policy to hold all immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, even those who have lived here for decades and haven’t committed crimes, an interpretation of immigration law that one court said would be “the broadest mass detention-without-bond mandate in our Nation’s history.”
The case centers on Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian national who entered the country in 2005, applied for asylum in 2016 and was granted a valid work permit, according to a decision from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested Barbosa da Cunha in September 2025 during a traffic stop. He was released on bond on Oct. 29, 2025, according to the government’s petition to the Supreme Court.
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“The courts have repeatedly and resoundingly rejected the Trump administration’s radical misinterpretation of the law,” said Michael K.T. Tan, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, which is representing Barbosa da Cunha.
“Try as it might, the government cannot twist the law to detain immigrants for months or even years on end without a bond hearing,” Tan said. “Not only is it cruel and inhumane; it is unlawful. We look forward to making that case to the Supreme Court.”
DHS’s decision in July 2025 to detain millions of immigrants without bond while their removal proceedings are pending is a major shift in how previous administrations interpreted immigration law. For decades, including during Trump’s first term, mandatory detention only applied to immigrants apprehended at the border.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit pointed to that history in ruling in Barbosa da Cunha’s favor on April 28.
Other circuit courts have widely rejected the practice, with nine of 11 circuits that have heard cases on the issue ruling against President Donald Trump. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a Sept. 10 ruling compared the mandatory detention policy to the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
The Justice Department has argued that just because no previous administration had enforced the law in this manner doesn’t mean that Congress didn’t give the president the ability to do so.
The adoption of the mandatory detention policy has also led to a wave of thousands of filings in federal court from immigrants seeking their release from detention centers. So far, federal judges have ruled in nearly 24,000 such cases, with an 85% loss rate for the administration, according to a Politico database of the decisions.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court once again approved the Trump administration’s speedy deportations of people to countries they have no ties to.
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