WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
  • The Fifth Circuit ruled that illegal aliens are not entitled to individual bond hearings while deportation proceedings remain pending.
  • The appeals court reversed district court decisions that had favored petitioners seeking hearings on dangerousness and flight risk.
  • One petitioner was a Mexican illegal alien who had lived in the United States for more than 22 years without obtaining citizenship.
  • Federal law establishes a 90 day removal period and directs the attorney general to detain certain aliens during that period.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has delivered a welcome ruling grounded in the law, finding that illegal aliens are not entitled to bond hearings while their deportation proceedings remain pending. That conclusion applies even to aliens who have lived in the United States for many years.

The decision offers an encouraging reminder that judges can still follow the law instead of bending it to fit leftist activism. Immigration proceedings should not become another vehicle for courts to invent protections that Congress never provided.

The Fifth Circuit reversed earlier district court decisions that had sided with the petitioners. Those petitioners claimed they were entitled to individual hearings addressing whether they posed a danger or might flee before their removal cases were completed.

The appeals court rejected that position. “We now conclude that Petitioners were not entitled to individual hearings on their dangerousness or flight risk before they could be lawfully detained by immigration authorities pending their removal proceedings,” it stated.

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One of the petitioners is a Mexican illegal alien who had lived in the United States for more than 22 years. Despite that lengthy period, he never obtained citizenship.

The constitutional dispute should be far simpler than activist judges have made it. Constitutional rights properly belong to citizens, although courts over the years have recognized limited due process protections for illegal aliens under the Fifth Amendment.

The new decision does not erase every accepted claim of limited due process. Instead, it rejects the petitioners’ interpretation that those protections required individual bond hearings before immigration authorities could continue holding them during removal proceedings.

That distinction matters because the left routinely treats every immigration enforcement action as though it were an attack on constitutional government. Meanwhile, Democrats who demand expansive protections for illegal aliens have trampled the First, Second, and Sixth Amendment rights of Americans.

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The government cannot lawfully censor Americans on social media for stating that there are two sexes or imprison political opponents for years without a trial. At the same time, federal immigration authorities may arrest and deport illegal aliens without providing the bond hearings demanded by these petitioners.

The immigration system already contains an expensive and cumbersome set of proceedings. Woke courts have repeatedly made that machinery more burdensome by layering additional requirements onto the process, even when the governing law gives federal authorities clear detention powers.

The legal detention period for an illegal alien who has been ordered removed is 90 days. That period may be extended much longer when the alien does not make a good faith effort to legitimize his presence in the country.

Federal law is direct about detention during the removal period. The relevant language appears in 8 U.S. Code § 1231 and leaves little room for the sort of judicial creativity immigration activists prefer.

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The statute states, “During the removal period, the Attorney General shall detain the alien. Under no circumstance during the removal period shall the Attorney General release an alien who has been found inadmissible .” That command directly addresses detention after an alien has been ordered removed.

Immigration officers and other federal authorities also possess additional powers involving suspected illegal aliens. Those authorities further expose the weakness of Democratic claims that ICE has no right to detain illegal aliens for extended periods.

The Fifth Circuit’s decision cuts through one attempt to impose another hearing requirement on immigration officials. Petitioners were not entitled to individualized determinations about dangerousness or flight risk before lawful detention pending their removal proceedings could continue.

The ruling does not indulge the argument that years spent inside the United States automatically create a right to release. Longevity alone does not transform illegal presence into citizenship or entitle an alien to the bond process demanded in this case.

For conservatives frustrated by years of activist immigration rulings, the decision is a refreshing dose of legal sanity. Courts should apply the statutes governing detention and removal, not manufacture new obstacles that make immigration enforcement slower, costlier, and less effective.

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