Trump Administration Gets a Win in the Eighth Circuit

The Trump administration got another win in court today when a panel of judges from the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals sided with them on the issue of bond hearings for illegal immigrants.

Federal law doesn’t require bond hearings for noncitizens arrested by immigration officials in the interior of the country, an Eighth Circuit panel found in a split decision Wednesday, siding with the Trump administration in a hotly debated area of immigration law.

Under the law, Eighth Circuit Judge Bobby Shepherd wrote, even foreign nationals who have long lived and worked in the country count as “seeking admission”—even if they aren’t actively taking steps to gain lawful status—and thus aren’t entitled to bond hearings.

Fox News describes the details of the case:

The case involved Mexican national Joaquin Herrera Avila, who was captured in Minneapolis in August and failed to produce legal credentials authorizing his admission to the U.S. He was detained without bond and faced removal proceedings…

A district court in Minnesota granted Avila’s petition for habeas corpus, or to challenge the legality of his detention, which the Trump administration challenged.

So the district court agreed with Avila but the case is now being returned to them after today’s ruling by the Eighth Circuit. The Trump administration changed how it approached the law in question last summer:

For years, authorities recognized that noncitizens apprehended in the interior of the country had the right to argue for their release in immigration court.

But last summer, the Trump administration adopted the legal stance that those migrants were instead governed by the same part of the law that applied to people coming in at the border and thus weren’t entitled to a bond hearing.

It’s a powerful tool in the administration’s mass-deportation campaign, advocates say, since detained migrants are much less likely to successfully fight their cases.

People picked up by ICE challenged the claim they had no right to a bond hearing and federal judges have sided with them in nearly ever case.

This summer, the Department of Homeland Security adopted a new view of the Immigration and Nationality Act, declaring that nearly all noncitizens arrested by immigration authorities must be detained while their cases proceed.

The policy shift, a key part of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda, has placed immigration law in unprecedented flux. Courts are flooded with habeas corpus petitions claiming the new policy infringes on the rights of the detainees, some of whom have lived in the US for years and have put down roots in their communities…

Federal judges have almost uniformly sided against the government, granting detainees a chance at bond or ordering their release outright. One analysis last month by a judge in the Southern District of New York found that out of 362 cases nationwide, judges rejected the government’s stance in all but 12.

But now those cases seem to have turned a corner. It’s not just the Eighth Circuit which sided with the Trump administration. Last month the Fifth Circuit reached the same conclusion.

The Trump administration has the power to detain noncitizens arrested in the interior of the country without giving them a chance to argue for their release in immigration court, a Fifth Circuit panel ruled Friday.

The split decision came just days after oral arguments and represents a major victory for the administration…

Judge Edith Jones, a Reagan appointee writing for the majority, said even though that interpretation of the law is contrary to decades of practice, “the government’s past practice has little to do with the statute’s text.”

“The text says what it says, regardless of the decisions of prior Administrations,” she wrote in a decision joined by Trump appointee Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan. “Years of consistent practice cannot vindicate an interpretation that is inconsistent with a statute’s plain text.”

This isn’t over yet since a) these decisions only apply to states within the Fifth and Eighth Circuits and b) they can still be appealed. Still, AG Pam Bondi celebrated today’s decision as a win.

MASSIVE COURT VICTORY against activist judges and for President Trump’s law and order agenda!

The Eighth Circuit has held that illegal aliens can be detained without bond — following a similar ruling from the Fifth Circuit last month.

The law is very clear, but Democrats and…

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) March 25, 2026

The Eighth Circuit has held that illegal aliens can be detained without bond — following a similar ruling from the Fifth Circuit last month.

The law is very clear, but Democrats and activist judges haven’t wanted to enforce it. This administration WILL. 

Imagine how many illegal alien crimes could have been averted if the left had simply followed the law?

Our attorneys @thejusticedept will never stop fighting for President Trump’s agenda.

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