The Daily Fuckup

A federal appeals court and a federal judge in Washington issued separate immigration rulings this week that constrained two enforcement theories, but only in the cases before them.

On May 6, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said two Mexican nationals who had entered the United States without inspection and were later arrested during traffic stops in Florida were not subject to mandatory no-bond detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) on the facts presented. The panel said that provision applies to applicants for admission who are seeking lawful entry, and it concluded that Fidencio Hernandez Alvarez and Ismael Cerro Perez were not doing that when they were taken into custody.

The court also drew a clear line around its holding. It said it was not deciding whether Congress could authorize detention of unadmitted people in other settings, and it did not reach whether either man was a flight risk or a danger to the community. The decision upheld habeas relief for both petitioners and rejected the government’s reading of the statute in those consolidated cases.

In Washington, Judge Beryl A. Howell enforced a preliminary injunction in a class-action case and said immigration officers in the District of Columbia could not rely on the probable-cause standard or analytical approach in a five-page memorandum from former acting ICE Director Todd Lyons when making warrantless civil immigration arrests. The court said the government had to comply with its earlier order requiring individualized probable-cause determinations that a person was likely to escape before an arrest without a warrant.

That ruling was also limited. It applied to civil immigration arrests in the District and to the memo’s framework, not to warrantless arrests everywhere. Both decisions leave the broader disputes alive, but each one trims back the government’s position in the case in front of that court.