ICE: millions of undocumented immigrants no longer eligible for bond hearings

Immigrants who arrived in the country illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing, the Trump administration has declared. The news comes as a high number of undocumented aliens fight deportation proceedings in court.

According to documents reviewed by The Washington Post, the indications were given by Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in a memo dated July 8.

The ICE chief advised officials that these immigrants should be detained "during the deportation process," a process that can take months or years.

Lawyers say the policy will apply to immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in recent decades, including during the Biden Administration. The numbers affected could number in the millions, according to official statistics.

Goodbye to the bond hearing before an immigration judge

Prior to this directive, resident immigrants were generally allowed to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. However, Lyons wrote that the Trump  Administration's Homeland Security and Justice departments had "revised their legal position on detention and release authorities" and had determined that such immigrants "could not be released from ICE custody."

Undocumented immigrants would be eligible for parole in "rare instances," but that decision would rest with an immigration official, not a judge, the ICE official announced.

The provision is based on a section of immigration law that says unauthorized immigrants "shall be detained" after arrest, but that has historically applied to those who recently crossed the border and not to long-term residents.

Lyons, who oversees the country's 200 immigration detention centers, wrote that the policy is expected to face legal challenges.

The new detention policy comes days after Congress approved a spending package that will allocate about $45 billion over the next four years to incarcerate immigrants and thereby process their civil deportation.

The directive will allow ICE to nearly double the nation's immigration detention capacity to 100,000 people per day.