An appeals court decision late Friday has paved the way for immigrants detained in Minnesota to be held indefinitely in Texas detention facilities.
In a 2-1 ruling, Judge Edith Jones, a Reagan appointee in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, said that the federal government was justified in its use of a 1996 border-entry statute to detain immigrants indefinitely. Judge Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee, agreed while Biden appointee Dana Douglas dissented.
The ruling has significant ramifications for immigrants detained in Minnesota who have increasingly been rushed out of state to detention facilities in Texas, which is in the Fifth Circuit’s jurisdiction. According to ACLU policy counsel John Boehler, the court’s decision to subject detainees to mandatory detention without bond hearings — where an immigration judge determines if a detained individual can be released from custody — is a particularly difficult blow.
“That’s where so many of the cases in our state have provided relief for the immigrant community,” Boehler said.
The ruling also has ramifications for the increasing number of habeas petitions being filed on behalf of immigrants taken from Minnesota. Habeas corpus cases force officials to justify the legal basis of a person’s detainment or imprisonment, and have been a key tool for immigration lawyers since federal immigration authorities arrived in Minnesota.
With the new ruling, the government’s ability to hold detainees in Texas and other detention facilities in the Fifth Circuit has strengthened dramatically.
“It’s going to incentivize, on the government’s end, transferring people to Texas as quickly as possible,” Boehler said.
A challenge to the Supreme Court is likely to follow.
Friday’s ruling immediately upends decades of precedent, said former Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Ryan Wood.
“The entire system over the last several decades has been designed on the premise that 95% of respondents in removal proceedings are going to be eligible for a bond hearing, and eligible to be out of custody,” Wood said. “We’ve completely flipped the script on that with this new interpretation of the statutes.
“It’s just a seismic shift.”
New legal landscape
There are 13 judicial circuits in the United States, and decisions issued within a circuit are binding only in districts within their own circuit. The Fifth Circuit covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Minnesota is in the Eighth Circuit.
Immigrants can still continue with their legal immigration proceedings while in detention, but may now be subject to difficult conditions in detention facilities without any timeline for release.
“The government’s end goal is to pressure those people, to use their words, [to] self-deport,” Bohler said. “Given the conditions that we’re hearing in the facilities in Texas and around the country, I think the government’s main goal is to just make life unbearable for these detainees.”
The new legal landscape in Texas means that immigration lawyers in Minnesota have increasingly difficult options to free their clients being held in Texas.
“We’re essentially operating under two different systems, two different interpretations of the law,” Boehler said.
At the heart of the legal battle ensuing in courts across the country is a 1996 statute pertaining to the mandatory detention of immigrants arriving at the U.S. Border.
Under Statute 8 U.S.C. 1225 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), if “an alien seeking admission [to the United States] is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted, the alien shall be detained for a proceeding.”
It’s this clause, “seeking admission,” that has emerged as the key point of contention. The federal government argues that the term applies to every immigrant who did not legally enter the United States, regardless of how long they have been in the country.
According to University of Minnesota law professor Linus Chan, however, the statute was drafted to govern decisions made only at the country’s border, not the interior.
“That is a statute that basically decides what to do about people who are coming at the border,” Chan said. “It’s referencing much more on the physical entry side. They have border patrol policies about using detention, and that detention, just to be clear, was always designed to be very short term.
Since the passage of the IIRIRA in 1996, the statute has never been used to justify the detention of immigrants living in the interior of the United States. Chan said that using the statute to do so effectively expands the jurisdiction of the border throughout the country.
“They [immigrants in the U.S.] are now being treated as if they are physically outside the United States seeking entry,” Chan said. “There’s no way that Congress expected that. If they did think about that, they would have budgeted money for detention back in 1996.”
Chan is not alone in this interpretation. The government’s detention of immigrants using the statute has been challenged in district courts across the country with overwhelming success. According to a review by Politico, at least 360 judges in more than 3,000 cases have ruled against the government’s detention strategy, while only 27 judges backed it in about 130 cases.
Boehler said that the decision to bring the case before the Fifth Circuit — one of the most conservative in the country — was a calculated decision.
“Because they’ve had such little success at the district level under traditional processes, they’re making formerly losing arguments in friendly jurisdictions like the Fifth Circuit,” Boehler said.
The Fifth Circuit’s decision has a significant impact on the futures of immigrants detained across the country. Despite the many district courts that have ruled against the government in other states, detainees being held in Texas are subject to the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit. This means that for a detainee from Minnesota sent to Texas, any associated legal challenges are likely to be heard there too.
“Any federal judge in Texas is now bound by the 5th Circuit’s decision,” Chan said.
What comes next
As court challenges to the government’s detention strategy continue across the country, the matter is likely to be elevated to the United States Supreme Court in the near future.
Plaintiffs could choose to appeal to the Supreme Court immediately and ask for a pause on the case, known as a stay, while the Supreme Court decides. They could also appeal within the Fifth Circuit to have the case heard by every judge in the circuit, though the likelihood of this succeeding is unclear.
According to Chan, this sets up a difficult strategic decision for the plaintiffs.
Filing an appeal to the Supreme Court immediately would provide stronger justification that irreparable harm is being caused to detainees, increasing the likelihood of the court pausing the Fifth Circuit’s decision, he said. It also means plaintiffs would be arguing one case, and by extension, one dissent, while Circuit Appeals Courts across the country are likely to reject the government’s detention strategy in the near future.
“Do you want the force of the weight of more and more decisions saying this is wrong?” Chan said. “Or are you going to try to figure out whether the harm that is being inflicted on these individuals? That needs to be taken into consideration.”
In the meantime, the implications of the Fifth Circuit’s decision will continue to negatively impact immigrants being detained in Minnesota. Wood said that with such a dramatic change of course, there will be increased strain on immigration courts, detention facilities and legal practitioners.
Until any resolution is reached by the Supreme Court, immigrants held in Texas now have limited legal options and indefinite timelines for detention. In Minnesota, that means immigration authorities will continue to send detainees out of state as quickly as possible.
“Now it’s a race to Texas,” Wood said.
