Two federal appeals courts rejected the Trump administration's mandatory-detention policy on the same day. The rulings, both issued Thursday, July 30, and both decided 2 to 1, came from different courts in different cases, and they should not be collapsed into one decision [1][2].
In the Seventh Circuit, the case is Jaciel Rojas v. Samuel Olson, No. 25-3127 [1]. Judge Joshua Kolar wrote the majority opinion, joined by Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi. 'Detention without sufficient purpose, or indefinitely prolonged detention, threatens due process,' Kolar wrote, as quoted by Wisconsin Watch [1]. The ruling opens bond-hearing eligibility for detainees held in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin [1].
Judge Diane Sykes dissented, and her closing functions as an invitation: 'At this point, only the Supreme Court can bring uniformity and settle this question once and for all. I anticipate that it will do so soon.' [1]
The Ninth Circuit issued its own 2 to 1 ruling the same day, in case No. 25-6842 [2]. Judge Daniel Bress, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority, joined by Judge M. Margaret McKeown, a Clinton appointee; Judge Carlos Bea, a George W. Bush appointee, dissented [2]. The panel held that people apprehended in the interior of the country, as opposed to at the border, are not subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. Section 1225(b)(2)(A) [2].
Bress did not present the statute as clean: 'Although no reading of the complicated and interrelated textual provisions at issue here is without some shortcomings, the historical understanding of the statute is the better one.' [2] That concession marks the live core of the dispute: the administration's reading of the statute is a reading, and DHS defends it as the faithful one. The department's statement, carried by Al Jazeera: 'President Donald Trump and Secretary Mullin are now enforcing the law as it was actually written to keep America safe.' [2]
Wisconsin Watch's reporting places the circuit tally at six to two: the Second, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits against the mandatory-detention policy, the Fifth and Eighth with the administration [1]. That count rests on secondary aggregation rather than a circuit-by-circuit review of each ruling, and it is attributed here rather than adopted.
The administration petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the issue last month, per Al Jazeera [2]. Sykes expects the Court to act, and wrote so in terms. Until it does, whether a detained immigrant can ask a judge for release depends on which circuit holds them, a map with six answers on one side and two on the other [1][2].
