Supreme Court to Review No-Bond Immigration Detention Policy – The Epoch Times

Immigration and Customs Enforcement stand guard (AP Photo)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 1 agreed to decide whether federal law requires the government to detain, without a bond hearing, people who entered the United States unlawfully, even if they have been in the country for years.

The justices granted the petition in Rhoney v. Da Cunha in an unsigned order. No justices dissented. The court did not explain its decision.

The case asks whether a 1996 detention statute known as 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(2)(A), a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, requires the mandatory detention of individuals arrested in the interior of the country or only people formally seeking admission at an authorized port of entry.

The Supreme Court is expected to resolve a split between federal courts of appeals.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided in this case that a mandatory detention rule applies only to a noncitizen who is both an “applicant for admission” and “seeking admission” and that someone living in the interior long after an unlawful entry is instead covered by a different statute that allows release on bond.

However, the Fifth and Eighth circuits have gone in the opposite direction, finding that unlawful presence in the country without having been admitted is enough to require detention for the duration of removal proceedings.

The respondent, Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa Da Cunha, is a Brazilian citizen who entered the United States illegally around 2004 and has been in the country ever since.

In September 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers came upon Da Cunha during a traffic stop in Norwood, Massachusetts. They took him into custody. The Department of Homeland Security began removal proceedings against him and determined that, under Section 1225(b)(2)(A), he must be detained without the possibility of bond for the duration of those proceedings. The immigration judge found that he was not entitled to a bond hearing and that he was subject to mandatory detention under the section, according to the government’s petition.

The day he was detained, Da Cunha filed a petition in federal court claiming that his detention without a bond hearing violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, as well as the due process clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. The case was transferred from the U.S. District Court for the District of Western Massachusetts to the U.S. District Court for the District of Western New York.

That court granted his petition, finding the section did not apply to him and that instead his detention was governed by Section 1226(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows release on bond or conditional parole while the noncitizen’s deportation proceedings continue. The court ordered the government to hold a bond hearing. One was held on Oct. 28, 2025, and the next day, Da Cunha was released on bond, the government’s petition states.

The Second Circuit affirmed, finding that the detention requirement in Section 1225(b)(2)(A) covers only “those noncitizens who present themselves at a port of entry for admission, or who cross the physical border into the United States but are apprehended at the ‘threshold of initial entry.’”

The government argued in the petition that the Fifth and Eighth circuits “correctly held” that the section covers noncitizens “and mandates their detention pending removal proceedings.” The Second Circuit, along with the Sixth, Tenth, and Eleventh circuits have found “that such aliens are not covered by Section 1225(b)(2)(A) but rather subject to discretionary detention under Section 1226(a) and entitled to bond hearings.”

The government took the position that Raycraft v. Lopez-Campos, a Sixth Circuit case, was a better vehicle for resolving the legal issue and had asked the justices to hold the petition in Rhoney v. Da Cunha.

“Lopez-Campos more directly presents the due-process issue,” the petition reads, “making it a superior vehicle for considering the lawfulness of the government’s mandatory detention pending removal proceedings of aliens present without admission under Section 1225(b)(2)(A).”

In the Lopez-Campos case, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said that there is now “an unworkable patchwork of inconsistent immigration enforcement, where aliens present without admission are subject to mandatory detention in some circuits but are entitled to bond hearings and often released in others.”

“Immigration enforcement should not depend on geographical happenstance,” Sauer said in court papers.

The Supreme Court has not yet scheduled oral argument in the new case.