Supreme Court to Review Key Part of Trump’s Immigration Policy

The Supreme Court agreed Thursday to review President Donald Trump’s policy of imposing mandatory detention without bond hearings for people who entered the country illegally, taking up one of the administration’s most aggressive and controversial moves to crack down on immigration.

By granting an appeal on the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement policy, the high court is once again making immigration a central theme of its new term that begins next week. The court is already considering a significant election appeal over state policies to combat noncitizen voting.

After returning to power in 2025, Trump broke with decades of past practice – including that of his first administration – and reinterpreted an immigration law Congress enacted in the 1990s to find that people in the country illegally should be subject to mandatory detention without bond hearings.

As a result of that shift, immigration officials have posted a staggering increase in the number of migrants held in detention, from just under 38,000 at the end of the Biden administration to more than 65,000 this past summer.

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The Supreme Court is likely to hear arguments in Rhoney v. Barbosa Da Cunha early next year and hand down a decision by late June.

The legal issues effectively boil down to two provisions in federal immigration law. One provision says that migrants who are arrested may be detained pending the outcome of their removal proceedings and may be released on bond while that process plays out. That language has long been interpreted to give immigration officials flexibility on who is detained.

But another provision says that “in the case of an alien who is an applicant for admission,” officials “shall” detain that immigrant if immigration officers determine that the person “is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted.”

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