From The Hill: A federal judge on Wednesday vacated an immigration court ruling giving the Trump administration broad powers to detain migrants, forcing them to give bond hearings and then possibly release thousands in custody.
The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Sunshine Sykes excoriated the Trump administration’s claims that it is targeting the worst of the worst for deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are at times relying on shaky legal ground to detain migrants, wrote Sykes, an appointee of former President Biden, and migrants are therefore entitled to a bond hearing to determine whether they may pursue their immigration case outside of ICE detention.
“‘Worst of the worst’ is an inaccurate description of most of those affected by DHS and ICE’s operations. Perhaps in utilizing this extreme language DHS seeks to justify the magnitude and scope of its operations against non-criminal noncitizens. Maybe that phrase merely mirrors the severity and ill-natured conduct by the Government. Even though these press releases might contain an inkling of truth, they ignore a greater, more dire reality,” she wrote.
To justify her decision, Sykes cited the case of the 5-year-old child who was allowed to remain with his illegal alien father after the father was arrested in Minnesota and sent to a detention center in Texas.
However, the report notes that Sykes’s ruling clashes with a decision on Friday, Feb. 6, by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which split 2-1 in determining the federal government’s detention practices are legal.
ABOUT THIS JUDGE: Sunshine Suzanne Sykes, a Democrat, was born in 1974 on the Navajo Nation Reservation in Tuba City, Arizona and grew up in Gallup, New Mexico. In 2013, she was nominated by then-California Governor Jerry Brown to serve as a judge on the Riverside County Superior Court. Joe Biden nominated Sykes to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California in December 2021, and she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in May 2022.
US District Judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California, on February 18 threw out the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision endorsing Trump’s mass detention policy https://t.co/oiLvmTELx2 pic.twitter.com/AvN5K1zgvM
— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) February 19, 2026
READ MORE from The Hill.
VICTORY: Federal appeals court upholds Trump mass detention policy for illegal aliens
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