The full Fifth Circuit unanimously handed the Trump administration a major legal win, ruling that illegal aliens facing deportation have no constitutional right to walk free in the United States while their cases drag on.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, issued an unsigned per curiam order on July 22 stating flatly that noncitizens in removal proceedings are not entitled to bond hearings or release under the Fifth Amendment. The order stayed lower court rulings that had ordered ICE to free three men, Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez, Miguel Angel Gomez Alvarado and Alejandro Villegas Angel, pending individualized hearings on whether their continued detention served any purpose.
Brett Shumate, the assistant attorney general who leads the Justice Department's Civil Division, called it exactly what the administration has been chasing for months. "The full Fifth Circuit has issued an extraordinary precedential order making clear that illegal aliens do not have a constitutional right to roam free in the United States during their removal proceedings," Shumate said, according to Townhall. DHS General Counsel James Percival credited the ruling with restoring, in his words, the detention policy Congress actually wrote.
Twenty days is not long in appellate time, but this case moved fast. On July 2, a divided three judge panel of the same circuit ruled 2 to 1 that mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. Section 1225(b)(2) violated due process as applied to long-term residents like Sosnava Rodriguez, a Mexican national who has lived in Texas more than two decades and has no criminal record. That panel ordered bond hearings within 90 days for him and two co-petitioners, Gomez Alvarado, a Honduran national, and Villegas Angel, a Mexican national, both fathers of American citizen children arrested during routine traffic stops between November 2025 and February 2026.
The government asked the full court to step in. A majority of the Fifth Circuit's active judges agreed, voting on July 10 to rehear the case en banc, a move that automatically vacated the panel's ruling. By July 14 the court had already set aside the 90-day bond hearing requirement. The July 22 order confirmed it: no releases, no individualized hearings, while the underlying constitutional questions get fully argued, with oral argument tentatively set for September.
Chief Judge Jennifer Elrod, a George W. Bush appointee who took the circuit's top job in October 2024, presided over a court that did not split on this one. Every active judge signed on. That unanimity matters. The Fifth Circuit has plenty of internal disagreements on plenty of issues. On this one, none surfaced publicly.
The American Immigration Council, which represented the three men, framed the case differently before the reversal. "This case asked a simple question," the group said in a statement. "If the government wants to lock someone up, does it have to show that imprisonment serves a purpose?" The council argued the Constitution does not stop applying once someone is in immigration proceedings, and it is not done fighting. The en banc order is a stay, not a final merits ruling, and the underlying case will still be argued this fall.
A fight headed for the Supreme Court
The Fifth Circuit's about-face lands in the middle of a real circuit split. The Eighth Circuit has also upheld the administration's mandatory detention approach this year. The Second, Third and Sixth Circuits have gone the other way, siding with detainees who argue that indefinite detention without a bond hearing crosses a constitutional line. That kind of split rarely stays unresolved for long, and legal trackers already expect the Supreme Court to take up the question in its October 2026 term.
Until then, the practical effect runs through Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, the three states under the Fifth Circuit's jurisdiction, where thousands of detained immigrants had been counting on the July 2 ruling to force bond hearings. That relief is gone for now. ICE can keep holding people under Section 1225(b)2) without showing a judge why continued detention is necessary, at least until the full circuit rules on the merits or the Supreme Court steps in first.
For an administration that has made expanded detention and faster removals a centerpiece of its immigration agenda, this is a chokepoint cleared. For the men still sitting in ICE custody with no criminal record and American children waiting at home, it is a longer wait for the hearing a federal panel already said they deserved. Both things are true, and the Supreme Court will likely be the one to settle which one wins.
Also read: DHS Has Fined Illegal Immigrants Who Defied Deportation $84 Billion • Schmitt demands feds revoke citizenship papers wrongly given to diplomats' kids • Trump overrules DHS pause, orders ICE to resume traffic stops
