Federal appeals court judges on March 25 backed a Trump administration policy that requires detention for illegal immigrants inside the country—the second time an appellate court has upheld the policy.
Federal law states that the government shall detain illegal aliens who are seeking admission into the country and “not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted.” The Trump administration has been enforcing that law on illegal immigrants encountered inside the United States and holding them without bond during deportation proceedings.
The government detained Mexican native Joaquin Herrera Avila under the policy in the fall of 2025 in Minnesota. Avila filed suit, and a federal district court judge ruled in his favor. The ruling stated that because Avila had lived in the United States for years and had not sought legal status, he was not seeking admission.
A majority of judges on a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit panel overturned that ruling on March 25.
They said decisions in separate cases and the purpose of the law in question support the government’s interpretation, which is that illegal immigrants in the United States are seeking admission, even if they do not file an application for legal status.
The structure of the law “does not indicate that ‘seeking admission’ is a separate requirement for detention under the statute,” Circuit Judge Bobby Shepherd wrote for the majority. “As [the law] states, an applicant for admission must be detained ‘if the examining immigration officer determines that an alien seeking admission is not clearly …entitled to be admitted.’ Avila wants us to read this ‘if’ clause and find that there are two conditions for detention—one pertaining to ‘seeking admission’ and one pertaining to the alien’s entitlement to admission. But this reading is highly unnatural because there is no word like ‘and’ to signify that there are multiple conditions in the clause; the only relevant inquiry is whether an alien ‘is [or is] not clearly … entitled to be admitted.'”
The ruling remanded the case back to the district court, with instructions to proceed consistent with the new opinion.
Circuit Judge Ralph Erickson said in a dissent that the Trump administration policy was based on “a novel interpretation of ‘alien seeking admission'” that was not used by previous administrations and that the law should cover only those aliens who apply for admission and are seeking admission.
The new ruling came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit backed the administration’s policy.
“The text says what it says, regardless of the decisions of prior administrations,” the majority of that circuit panel said on Feb. 6.
This article was originally published by The Epoch Times.
