Activist Judges Invent ‘Squatter’s Rights’ for Illegal Aliens
Federal judges in Texas are openly testing the limits of a landmark appellate court decision that upheld President Donald Trump’s mass immigration detention policy — a move that could reignite one of the most contentious legal battles of his second term.
Last Friday, a three-judge panel on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Trump administration, affirming the government’s broad authority to detain immigrants targeted for deportation, including those without criminal records who have resided in the United States for decades.
The 2-1 decision represented a major victory for the administration’s enforcement-first approach to immigration, effectively endorsing large-scale, mandatory detention as consistent with federal law.
But within days of that ruling, two district judges in Texas — both within the 5th Circuit’s jurisdiction — signaled they would continue granting release petitions in certain cases, relying on novel legal theory rather than statutory interpretation.
Judge Kathleen Cardone, a George W. Bush appointee based in El Paso, ruled late Monday in at least five cases that the circuit court’s decision “has no bearing on this Court’s determination of whether [the petitioner] is being detained in violation of his constitutional right to procedural due process.”
Similarly, Judge David Briones, a Clinton appointee also in El Paso, wrote that immigrants who have “established connections” in the United States through long-term residence acquire a “liberty interest in being free from government detention without due process of law.”