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The president has limited immigration judges’ power to release detainees facing deportation. Immigrant rights groups say the policy is illegal.
Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent.
Sept. 24, 2025Updated 10:00 a.m. ET
For decades, U.S. immigration judges have granted bond to immigrants in detention who the court determined would show up for future hearings and were not public safety threats. That allowed many immigrants facing deportation to live in the community until their cases were decided, which often took years.
But those long backlogs grew even longer during the record surge in migrants entering the United States during the Biden administration. And in July, the Trump administration moved to make people who had crossed the border unlawfully ineligible for bond.
It was a major break with longstanding practice and emblematic of President Trump’s efforts to remake America’s immigration policy and make good on his pledge to deport millions of people.
This month, the Board of Immigration Appeals, a Justice Department body that reviews immigration court decisions, affirmed the shift, making the new policy binding on all immigration judges.
Now, detained immigrants facing deportation are generally expected to be held without bond for the duration of the legal proceedings.
The Board of Immigration Appeals said that immigration judges do not have to “hear bond requests or to grant bond” to people who did not lawfully enter the United States.
