President Donald Trump‘s efforts to expand “mandatory detention” for long-time but undocumented U.S. residents were slapped down Thursday by a judge he appointed.
Judge Daniel Bress, appointed by the president in his first administration, joined a slew of other federal courts in rejecting Trump’s claim to precedent.
“Although no reading of the complicated and interrelated textual provisions at issue here is without some shortcomings, the historical understanding of the statute is the better one,” wrote Bress.
“The government’s new interpretation, by contrast, is less consistent with the statutory text and introduces a series of interpretive complications.”
Bress was joined by another federal judge on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, reported.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision written by Bress, joined the Second, Sixth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuit courts in the decision, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, shared in an update on X.
Reichlin-Melnick pointed out that in 2025, the Trump administration had “declared that a 1996 law had, without anyone noticing, mandated the detention of every undocumented immigrant who initially entered the country unlawfully, no matter how long ago.”
Bress, who was joined in the decision by Judge M. Margaret McKeown — a judge appointed by President Bill Clinton — disagreed with the Trump administration.
“We conclude that the text, context, and structure of the INA, considered as a whole, did not direct such a significant, yet overlooked, change in the law,” according to the ruling. “Although no reading of the complicated and interrelated textual provisions at issue here is without some shortcomings, the historical understanding of the statute is the better one. The government’s new interpretation, by contrast, is less consistent with the statutory text and introduces a series of interpretive complications. We accordingly do not think that Congress in 1996 made such a large-scale change to our established system of immigration detention in the way that the government now contends.”
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