Appeals court limits Trump detention of immigrants to 90 days

A divided federal appeals court in New Orleans limited the Trump administration’s power to hold certain immigrants in mandatory detention while their deportation cases move forward, ruling that they cannot be kept in custody beyond 90 days unless they get a hearing to seek release on bond. The decision could affect thousands of detainees in the 5th Circuit, including people held in Texas and Louisiana, where immigration enforcement has been especially aggressive.

The 2-1 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sharpened a fight over how far federal detention authority can reach when a case drags on. Judge Leslie Southwick wrote for the majority that the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment due-process protections apply to the migrants before the court, including two Mexican citizens and one Honduran. He also said federal agencies must follow their own binding regulations, a point that constrains the government’s ability to rely on detention alone as deportation cases continue.

The case, Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496, grew out of the same litigation in which the Fifth Circuit had earlier, on February 6, 2026, accepted the government’s mandatory-detention theory in a separate 2-1 ruling. That earlier decision made the New Orleans-based court the first in the nation to embrace the administration’s reading of the statute. The new opinion went further and confronted the constitutional question left open before: whether people held under that theory must get a meaningful chance to argue for release before an immigration judge. The court’s own opinion said thousands of immigration detainees have since been filing habeas corpus applications in district courts in response to the earlier ruling.

Judge Cory Wilson dissented, saying the majority was overruling Congress’s authority. The Department of Homeland Security said it disagreed with the decision and remained confident in its legal position. Immigration lawyers and advocates viewed the ruling as a critical brake on prolonged confinement, especially in a circuit that covers some of the country’s busiest immigration courts and detention centers.

The practical effect is immediate and broad. People held under mandatory detention rules in the Fifth Circuit now have a judicially enforced path to a bond hearing after 90 days, instead of waiting indefinitely while their removal cases work through the system. The American Immigration Council said the case involved three fathers of U.S. citizen children and described the ruling as requiring meaningful due-process protections. The decision also limits one of the administration’s most aggressive enforcement tools, forcing the government to justify continued detention case by case instead of treating long custody as the default.