Appeals board rules undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond hearings
A federal immigration board said Friday that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are ineligible for bond hearings while they challenge deportation proceedings in court.
The decision, rendered by Judge Keith E. Hunsucker at the Board of Immigration Appeals, affirms a previous July order from Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who told ICE officers in a memo that such immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years.
Lawyers say the policy will apply to millions of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few decades, including under the Biden administration, The Washington Post previously reported.
In the past, immigrants residing in the U.S. generally have been allowed to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. But the Trump administration had “revisited its legal position on detention and release authorities” and determined that such immigrants “may not be released from ICE custody,” Lyons wrote in the July 8 memo.
In rare exceptions, immigrants may be released on parole, but that will be up to an immigration officer, not a judge, Lyons wrote.
The authority of Lyons’s memo was tested when Hunsucker reviewed an appeal filed by Jonathan Javier Yajure Hurtado, a Venezuelan who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and has resided in the country since. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted Hurtado temporary protected status in 2024, but that expired on April 2. He was apprehended by immigration authorities days later.
After his request for a bond hearing was denied by an immigration judge, Hurtado appealed that initial decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the executive branch.
Hunsucker said Hurtado’s appeal boiled down to a straightforward question: “Does the [Immigration and Nationality Act] require that all applicants for admission, even those … who have entered without admission or inspection and have been residing in the United States for years without lawful status, be subject to mandatory detention for the duration of their immigration proceedings … ?”
“Under the plain reading of the [Immigration and Nationality Act], we affirm the Immigration Judge’s determination that he did not have authority over the bond request,” he noted.
Hunsucker said his decision to deny a bond hearing was partially based on a section of immigration law that says unauthorized immigrants “shall be detained” after their arrest, which “usually connotes a requirement,” unlike the word “may,” which would imply discretion.
Historically, that section of immigration law has applied to those who recently crossed the border and not longtime residents.
The board’s decisions are binding for all Department of Homeland Security officers and immigration judges, unless modified or overruled by the U.S. attorney general or a federal court, according to its website. Most of the board’s decisions are subject to judicial review in the federal courts.
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• Maria Sacchetti and Carol D. Leonnig contributed.