by Paul Kiefer / Wisconsin Watch, Wisconsin Watch
July 31, 2026
A federal appeals court in Chicago on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy for immigrants in removal proceedings, ending its split over a year-old policy that has prevented thousands of immigrants in federal custody from requesting bond.
The 2-1 decision may allow hundreds of detainees in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin — the three states within the court’s jurisdiction — to seek bond hearings in immigration court.
At the center of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling: Jaciel Cirrus Rojas, a Mexican national who immigration authorities picked up in Racine last summer as “collateral” while searching for a different target.
The 7th Circuit joins five other federal appeals courts in ruling against the detention policy. Two courts have sided with the administration, likely setting the stage for the nation’s highest court to take up the issue.
“Detention without sufficient purpose, or indefinitely prolonged detention, threatens due process,” Judge Joshua Kolar wrote in the court’s majority opinion, joined by Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi. Former President Joe Biden appointed both judges to the 7th Circuit.
“My colleagues and I could debate until we’re blue in the face,” wrote Judge Diane Sykes, a George W. Bush appointee, in her solo dissent.
“At this point, only the Supreme Court can bring uniformity and settle this question once and for all. I anticipate that it will do so soon.”
A fight over mandatory detention
The legal battle centers on opposing interpretations of a decades-old federal law.
The 1996 Immigration Reform Act requires immigration authorities to detain — without bond — anyone found crossing the U.S. border without authorization. Prior administrations applied that rule narrowly, allowing many immigrants arrested in the country’s interior to seek a bond hearing in immigration court.
The Trump administration bucked that approach in July 2025, when ICE Director Todd Lyons issued a new legal interpretation requiring detention without bond regardless of where immigrants are arrested.
The Board of Immigration Appeals, a panel of judges who set the rules for the federal immigration court system, signed off on the interpretation in September.
With bond off the table, tens of thousands of immigrants in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody turned to a backup option: filing habeas corpus petitions in federal district courts to challenge their detention. Unlike immigration courts, which are part of the U.S. Department of Justice, federal district courts belong to the judicial branch and, therefore, are technically independent of the White House. When a federal district court grants a habeas petition, it generally orders an immigration court judge to hold a bond hearing.
Wisconsin’s Western and Eastern District courts received roughly 100 habeas petitions in the past year, of which about 30 remained open as of Thursday.
From Racine to the 7th Circuit
Cirrus Rojas left his rural hometown in southern Mexico as a teenager, reuniting with his brother in Racine in 2018. He remained off immigration authorities’ radar until ICE agents arrived at his home in June 2025 looking for a prior tenant, said his attorney, Milwaukee-based Jennifer Bizzotto.
“He answered their questions,” she added, “and they used his responses to detain him.”
Wisconsin court records show no prior criminal convictions or civil citations under his name.
Cirrus Rojas’ first language is a dialect of Chatino, a group of indigenous languages spoken by roughly 50,000 people in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
“There are not a lot of forms or information available in Chatino,” Bizzotto added — a barrier that she said largely explains why Cirrus Rojas didn’t file for asylum until he entered ICE custody, citing fear of torture if he returned to Mexico.
He spent much of the following nine months in custody at the Dodge County jail as his case wound through the immigration court system, separated from his partner and child. Eastern District of Wisconsin Judge Brett Ludwig rejected his attempt to secure a bond hearing via habeas petition last October, but Cirrus Rojas and the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin appealed that denial to the 7th Circuit.
Cirrus Rojas was among the relatively few ICE detainees able to leave custody on bond in February after a federal district court judge in California vacated the mandatory detention rule. The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that decision less than a month later.
His case before the 7th Circuit continued even after he left custody. Just days before the Thursday ruling, immigration authorities signaled they intend to take Cirrus Rojas back into custody.
Courts split nationwide
The 7th Circuit remained split on the issue for months, leaving Wisconsin’s federal district court judges to reach their own interpretations of the 1996 immigration law. Three judges in the Milwaukee-based U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin ruled in the Trump administration’s favor, while seven Wisconsin judges — including two in the Western District — ruled against the administration.
Federal appellate courts are similarly divided. The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit and the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit have upheld the mandatory detention rule; the former has jurisdiction over many of ICE’s largest detention facilities. The 7th Circuit joins appellate courts based in New York, Cincinnati, Denver, Atlanta and San Francisco in rejecting the rule.
“If Congress had indeed demanded — but not funded — no-bond detention for all unlawful entrants, that may well have thrown the nation’s immigration system into chaos,” Kolar wrote. “Immigration authorities might have found themselves quickly overwhelmed by a colossal unfunded mandate to arrest and detain millions.”
Sykes took a different view of Congress’ goals. Lawmakers must have intended to “put all aliens who have not lawfully entered the country on equal footing,” she wrote, not to provide additional rights to those detained in the interior of the U.S.
A path to bond — for some
While detainees and attorneys nationwide await the Supreme Court’s guidance, some in Wisconsin are preparing for a wave of bond hearings.
ICE held more than 1,000 people across Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin as of the beginning of July, including more than 100 at the Dodge County jail. The 7th Circuit’s ruling does not mean all of them will get a bond hearing.
Congress’ 2025 Laken Riley Act requires detention without bond for immigrants “charged with, arrested for, (or) convicted of” an array of offenses ranging from shoplifting to assaulting a law enforcement officer. That requirement — along with procedural rules predating the Trump administration — could still bar some current detainees from securing bonds.
Just over half of all ICE detainees who passed through Wisconsin detention facilities between January 2025 and March 2026 had prior criminal convictions, most commonly for driving under the influence of alcohol. Another quarter had pending criminal charges when they entered ICE custody. The share with no prior criminal history, including Cirrus Rojas, has climbed in recent months.
The 7th Circuit’s ruling also does not force the hand of immigration court judges, who retain the authority to set bond amounts or reject bond requests altogether.
“It was hard enough to get bond before this interpretation (took effect) last year,” said Milwaukee immigration attorney Ben Crouse, though the mandatory detention rule added costly and time-intensive hurdles.
The anticipated flood of bond hearing requests had yet to appear as of Thursday evening.
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