Judge Sunshine Sykes has struck down a Trump administration policy of mandatory migrant detention, labeling its “worst of the worst” rhetoric inaccurate and ordering bond hearings for thousands of detainees.
In a blistering Wednesday ruling, U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes vacated a Board of Immigration Appeals decision that had granted the Trump administration expansive authority to detain migrants indefinitely without bond. Sykes, an appointee of President Biden, excoriated the administration’s “reckless violations of the law” and its rhetoric describing detainees as the “worst of the worst,” noting that such language “ignore[s] a greater, more dire reality” by sweeping non-criminal noncitizens into mandatory detention.
The judge emphasized that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE often rely on “shaky legal ground” to bypass the decades of precedent that typically allow long-term U.S. residents to seek bond. “‘Worst of the worst’ is an inaccurate description of most of those affected by DHS and ICE’s operations,” Sykes wrote, pointing to the case of Liam Conejo Ramos as evidence of the government’s “severity and ill-natured conduct.” While Sykes’s order forces the government to provide bond hearings to thousands in custody, it creates a significant legal conflict with a recent 2-1 decision from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which concluded that the “government’s position is correct” regarding its mandatory detention practices.