Seventh Circuit Splits on Trump’s Noncitizen Detention Policy

A Seventh Circuit panel split on the hotly contested issue of mandatory detention for noncitizens arrested in the interior of the country, ruling the Trump administration can’t apply the policy to noncitizens covered by a longstanding consent decree with ICE.

The judges couldn’t reach a majority agreement on the broader legality of the policy, however: Judge John Lee rejected the Trump administration’s legal interpretation denying bond hearings to those noncitizens; Judge Thomas Kirsch II dissented to say he agrees with the administration’s stance; and Judge Doris Pryor wrote a concurrence saying that, given the specifics of the case before them, there wasn’t a need to reach the merits of that question.

The result further muddies the waters on a policy that’s been backed by the Fifth and Eighth circuits and rebuffed by the Second Circuit.

For three decades, the government interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act’s detention provisions such that noncitizens arrested inside the country were generally entitled to argue for their release in immigration court. The Trump administration declared last year that, in their new view of the law, even noncitizens who have lived in the country for years are instead subject to mandatory detention, just like those trying to come in at the border.

But that interpretation “not only fails to take full account of the statutory language but ignores the relevant statutory context and background as well as the government’s own contemporaneous and decades-long understanding of the statute’s meaning,” Lee wrote.

His reasoning echoes a recent decision from the Second Circuit, which also rejected the administration’s stance. The Fifth and Eighth circuits sided with Trump, setting up a split that puts the issue on a likely track to be resolved by the US Supreme Court.

In dissent, Kirsch agreed with the government’s stance, saying the law mandating detention “is not limited merely to those actively seeking admission at the border or ports of entry.”

The matter reached the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit as part of the government’s challenge to a pair of orders from a Chicago federal judge overseeing a consent decree on warrantless immigration arrests. Tuesday’s decision upheld Judge Jeffrey Cummings’ order extending the deadline of the decree but reversed his order requiring the release of noncitizens arrested on warrants issued in the field.

Pryor joined Lee in part of his findings on the validity of the underlying orders, but stopped short of definitively finding against the government’s interpretation of the detention statutes. But, she noted, at the time the decree was signed, the parties involved—including the government—understood that mandatory detention applied to people apprehended “at the country’s border and shores,” not those arrested far past the border.

Pryor said there wasn’t a need to reach the broader question of the legality of mandatory detention, given the case’s origins as a dispute over the outlines of a consent decree. She did, however, castigate the government for making a “unilateral 180-degree change” without asking the judge to amend the terms of the decree.

“Here, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have refused to take the legally prescribed path to seek relief from the Consent Decree. They, instead, unilaterally sought to circumvent their contractually assented to terms and cease their obligations imposed by court order,” she said. “Our system of government does not condone such lawlessness.”

The case is Castanon Nava v. US Dep’t of Homeland Security, 7th Cir., No. 25-03050, opinion 5/5/26.