ICE apparently has decided to take the law into its own hands, shoving aside Congress and the courts — and the Constitution.
In a huge escalation of scope, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has issued a new memo that will allow endless detention without hearings for due process or bond, according to an internal memo snagged by The Washington Post.
In a mass deportation campaign that is about to grow exponentially with new infusion of cash from the “big beautiful bill,” ICE and other Homeland Security immigration forces are also attacking the rules set by Constitution and courts for hearings before instant deportation.
Specifically, in a July 8 memo, Todd M. Lyons, acting ICE director says that undocumented migrants are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court. Immigrants lacking papers should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years.
Until now, migrants in the U.S. have had the right to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. Lyons said new reviews by Homeland Security and Justice have determined that such immigrants “may not be released from ICE custody.” In rare exceptions immigrants may be released on parole, but that decision will be up to an immigration officer, not a judge, he wrote.
Values Questions and Practical Concerns
In practical terms, it means ICE masked agents who are grabbing migrants randomly at day labor spots, farms, workplaces, immigration courts or campuses now will looking to lock up manyfold more people — think millions — and sending them to private prisons in the U.S. or elsewhere with no legal checks. Gone is the facade of seeking those with criminal records. We’re entering an America that we will not recognize, if we are not there already.
The story of masked ICE agents seeking to question African, South American and Mexican teens playing baseball in a New York city park earlier this month being rebuffed by the team coach should send shivers down spines. Coach Youman Wilder told the agents the youths were American citizens and kept the agents at bay. Who are we becoming in the name of a citizens-only, immigrant-free nation that wants migrant labor sweat but offers no path to naturalization?
How dare ICE rewrite laws for immediate and endless detention? Is it more efficient for ICE to ignore the law? Maybe, but that doesn’t make it right, morally or legally. This is a guaranteed court challenge.
Since the memo emerged, the American Immigration Lawyers Association said members had reported that immigrants were being denied bond hearings in more than a dozen immigration courts across the country.
In its 2024 annual report, ICE said it detains immigrants only “when necessary” and that the vast majority of the 7.6 million people then on its docket were released pending immigration proceedings. Keeping them detained while their case is adjudicated has not been logistically possible — something that changed when Congress provided funds for detaining 100,000 migrants awaiting deportation in places like the new “alligator alley” Florida center. Immigrants are already subject to mandatory detention without bond if they have been convicted of murder or other serious crimes, though the threshold keeps dropping.
ICE is holding about 56,000 immigrants a day as officers sweep the nation for undocumented immigrants, working overtime to fulfill Trump’s goal of deporting one million in his first year.
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