Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: Trump Ends Catch-And-Release Bonds for Illegal Immigrants

During the 2016 and 2024 election cycles, Donald Trump promised to end “catch and release” immigration enforcement policies. This refers to the practice of allowing illegal immigrants bond while their cases work through the administrative courts, at least those who don’t appear to present a flight risk. However, the absconding rate is constantly high, and the result has been millions of illegal aliens absorbed into the country with few resources to re-arrest them and finish their cases.

At least for now, the opportunity for bonding out is closed. ICE will now detain all illegal border-crossers for the duration of their case, without exception:

The Trump administration is attempting to make millions of immigrants living in the country illegally ineligible to be released from detention on bond as they fight their deportation cases, according to an administration official familiar with the matter.

The policy shift, issued under what is known as interim guidance by acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons last week, will apply to all immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, no matter when. Lyons told officers in a memo that such immigrants should remain in detention throughout their deportation proceedings, which can stretch for months or even years, according to the official, who had been briefed on the memo.

The move marks a significant departure from decades of practice, when immigration judges had the latitude to release someone from detention on a bond if they weren’t deemed a flight risk. Immigration law states that all immigrants in the country illegally must be detained while their fates are decided, but with limited beds available in ICE jails, the government had considered the law effectively impossible to enforce.

Will this throw millions of illegal immigrants into detention centers overnight, as the Wall Street Journal suggests? Not really, not even theoretically. It’s too late to apply this to the “millions of immigrants living in the country illegally,” as the WSJ wastes syllables in describing illegal aliens. (Don’t let the Newspeak ministers distract from the fact that “illegal alien” is the correct legal term for people who enter and stay in the US illegally.) Most of those inside the US who could be impacted by this policy change are already absconders and subject to arrest and detention anyway. 

This policy is not aimed at the existing population of illegal aliens. It’s aimed at those who want to try entering the US illegally now and in the future. It sends a very clear signal that there will be no way to avoid making the inside of a detention center the sum total of one’s experience of living in the US under those circumstances. 

Most of those attempting to cross into the US illegally counted on the overwhelming nature of the migration to force the US to use catch-and-release bonds. However, two important changes have taken place. First, the border is more tightly secured, as Tom Homan noted at the beginning of the month. Illegal crossings have dropped by over 90% year-on-year, delivering one of Trump’s biggest political wins so far:

THE TRUMP EFFECT – Total Border Patrol encounters for the entire month of June 2025 was 6,070. That is less than a single day under Biden. As a matter of fact, the total number of encounters is less than half of a single day under Biden
on many days. Also, none of the 6,070 were…

— Thomas D. Homan (@RealTomHoman) July 1, 2025

The total released by Homan marks a 93.1% drop in nationwide Border Patrol encounters from June 2024, when 87,606 migrants were nabbed trying to enter the country illegally.

It’s also a 94% and 97% decline from June 2023 and June 2022, when, respectively, 100,606 and 193,027 migrants were encountered by Border Patrol. 

In June 2022, the average daily total of migrant encounters was about 6,434 per day. 

Last month, Border Patrol reported encountering just over 10,000 migrants nationwide.

This brings us to the second new development: the One Big Beautiful Bill. Congress injected more than $170 billion into the Department of Homeland Security to bolster border-related functions. Much of those funds will go to expand ICE detention capacity from 40,000 to 100,000, and other funds will expand the capacity of the administrative judges handling these cases. While some of that detention and process capacity could be used for absconders who are found and detained, most of it will likely get used for quick turnarounds on new border crossers, making their U-turns a lot quicker and entirely more certain. 

It’s the combination that makes this work. Even 100,000 beds would not have been enough while over 100,000 crossed into the country each month. Don’t forget that the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris bill that they claimed would solve this problem wouldn’t have put any emergency measures into place until the number of illegal border crossers went over 2500 per day, or 75,000 a month, which still would have made no-bond policies nearly impossible to implement. At 6,000 per month, a bed capacity of 100,000 should be pretty effective as long as DHS hires enough administrative judges to process these cases expeditiously. 

It will take years, and perhaps decades, to fully deal with the damage already done by decades of lax enforcement and a four-year period of open-borders chaos from the Biden Regency. However, the Trump administration has worked hard to turn off that spigot and to make the disincentives plain enough to discourage any more “waves” or “caravans” coming to the southern border. 

That’s what voters wanted when they elected Trump to a second term. And Trump has delivered it in record time. 

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left’s lies, new legislation wasn’t needed to secure our border, just a new president.

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