A federal appeals court compared the Trump administration’s no-bond immigrant detention policy to the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, in a scathing decision on Thursday.
In the 2-1 ruling, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Nicole Berner argued that the administration had asked the court to “interpret certain amendments” made to federal immigration laws in 1996 in order to eliminate bond hearings for individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.
“Mass detention of marginalized individuals without due process harkens back to some of the darkest moments in our country’s history,” Berner wrote, comparing the ICE detentions to the unconstitutional detainment of Chinese immigrants in the 1890s and the internment of thousands of Japanese people in camps in the 1940s.