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Judge Bianco states that a different decision would cause the biggest mass detention of immigrants without bail in US history.
By Mahnoor | 29- April-2026
On March 1, 2026, in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, local police arrested a protester. This happened after they announced that the demonstration against ICE operations outside the Whipple Federal Building was illegal. — Reuters/File
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration couldn’t automatically detain most people arrested in its immigration crackdown without letting them ask to be released on bond.
A panel of three judges in New York decided that President Trump’s administration wrongly interpreted an old immigration law to justify detaining many people.
That decision happened after two other appeals courts made opposite rulings. They reversed decisions that helped detained people who didn’t get bond hearings with immigration judges. Because of these different decisions, the Supreme Court might have to step in.
Judge Joseph Bianco agreed that other courts had ruled differently. However, he said his panel disagreed with those courts. Instead, they sided with over 370 lower-court judges across the country who believe the government is wrong and is misinterpreting the law.
His decision supported a New York judge’s order that freed Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian man. Immigration officers arrested him last year while he was driving to work, after he had lived in the United States for more than 20 years.
Bianco, appointed by Trump, argued that a different ruling would mean the 2nd Circuit was supporting “the largest ever order in our country to detain millions of non-citizens without the chance to be released on bond.”
Changing a long-held view of immigration law, last year the US Department of Homeland Security decided that non-citizens already living in the United States, not just those coming to the border, can be considered as ‘applicants for admission’ and must be detained.
According to U.S. immigration law, people who want to enter the country must be held in custody while their immigration cases are reviewed in court, and they cannot request to be released on bond.
In September, the Board of Immigration Appeals, a part of the Justice Department, made a ruling that agreed with this understanding. Now, immigration judges across the country who work for the department are required to order people to be detained.
Michael Tan, a lawyer for Barbosa at the ACLU, stated that the court correctly decided the Trump administration couldn’t simply change the law as it pleased.
The US Justice Department, which is defending the policy in court, didn’t respond when asked for a statement.
