Appeals Court Stays Orders Barring Detention of 3 Illegal Immigrants Without Bond Hearings

A DOJ official said the order made clear that illegal immigrants ‘do not have a constitutional right to roam free’ during their removal proceedings.

A migrant from Honduras looks through the border wall on the beach of Tijuana, Mexico, on Dec. 3, 2018. Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on July 21 stayed lower court rulings that ordered the release of three illegal immigrants and blocked the federal government from holding them without a bond hearing.

The three men—Mexican nationals Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez and Alejandro Villegas Angel, and Honduran national Miguel Angel Gomez Alvarado—illegally entered the United States and had lived in Texas for more than a decade. They were detained during separate traffic stops between November 2025 and February 2026.

The three illegal immigrants had no criminal records and were fathers of U.S. citizen children. Following a 2025 policy change, the government had argued they were subject to mandatory detention without bond under federal immigration law because they had never been legally admitted to the country.

Federal district courts in Texas ordered the immigrants’ release in February after they filed a petition challenging the legality of their detention. The district courts ruled that holding them without a bond hearing violated their rights to due process under the Fifth Amendment.

The Fifth Circuit on July 21 granted the government’s request to stay the lower court rulings pending rehearing en banc, but did not provide a reason for its decision.

“The full Fifth Circuit has issued an extraordinary precedential order making clear that illegal aliens do not have a constitutional right to roam free in the United States during their removal proceedings,” Brett Shumate, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Division, said in a post on X.

The National Immigration Project, which represents the immigrants, did not return a request for comment by publication time.

The Fifth Circuit ruled 2–1 on July 2 that the government could not hold the immigrants in detention for more than 90 days without a bond hearing. The majority held that although Congress may require detention of certain immigrants, the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause still protects illegal immigrants who have established long-term residence in the United States.

On July 10, the appeals court granted rehearing en banc for the case, vacating the July 2 ruling and setting the case for reconsideration by the full court, according to the National Immigration Project.

The National Immigration Project said in a July 2 statement that the case would have “enormous implications” for thousands of immigrants detained in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

“The Fifth Amendment has protected people living in this country from being imprisoned without justification for well over a century. What it doesn’t do is enforce itself,” Ellie Norton, a senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Project and co-counsel in the case, said in the statement.

Tom Gantert contributed to this report.