The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals became the ninth federal appeals court to reject the Trump administration’s effort to deny bond hearings to long-term noncitizens arrested inside the United States, deepening a nationwide conflict that the administration has already asked the Supreme Court to resolve. In a 2-1 published opinion issued Thursday, the Richmond-based court held that the government used the wrong section of federal immigration law when it treated two men who had lived in the country for decades as newly arriving “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention. The Associated Press reported that two other appeals courts have accepted the administration’s interpretation, leaving radically different rules in different parts of the country.

The ruling in Lopez Garcia v. Guadian does not cancel removal proceedings, confer legal status or guarantee release. It affirms that people in the petitioners’ position must be eligible for a bond hearing, where an immigration judge decides whether detention remains necessary while the underlying immigration case proceeds. The Fourth Circuit’s official listing identifies the case as a published immigration habeas decision and records the judgment as affirmed. Published circuit precedent carries consequences beyond the two named petitioners because federal courts throughout Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina must now apply the majority’s interpretation unless the full Fourth Circuit or the Supreme Court changes it.

Oscar Enrique Lopez Garcia came to the United States from Guatemala as a child in 1996 and had lived and worked in Washington for more than 30 years when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained him on his way to work in October 2025. He is married and has two U.S.-citizen children. Juan Jose Rivera came from El Salvador in 2005, lived and worked in the United States for 20 years and, according to the court, had never been arrested or charged with a crime before ICE detained him near his home that same month. Neither man received a bond hearing at first. Federal district courts granted their habeas petitions, and immigration judges later found that neither posed a danger or flight risk. Both were released on bond in November 2025 while their removal cases continued.

The dispute turns on two adjacent provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Section 1226 authorizes arrest and detention of a noncitizen pending a removal decision and allows release on bond in ordinary cases, while preserving mandatory detention for specified criminal and security categories. Section 1225 directs detention of certain applicants for admission who cannot show that they are clearly entitled to enter. For nearly three decades after Congress overhauled immigration law in 1996, the government generally applied the first provision to people arrested in the interior and the second to people arriving at the border, even when an interior detainee had originally entered without inspection.

That practice changed in July 2025. An ICE policy memo instructed officers to treat people who entered without inspection as applicants for admission who “may not be released” from ICE custody during removal proceedings, regardless of how long they had lived in the country. The Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals later adopted the same interpretation, making it binding on immigration judges unless controlling federal appellate law required another result. The administration says the 1996 statute has always mandated detention for this group and that earlier administrations simply failed to use the authority Congress supplied.

The majority’s ruling

Judge Nicole Berner, joined by Senior Judge Barbara Keenan, concluded that Section 1226—not Section 1225—governs people such as Lopez Garcia and Rivera who were arrested after years inside the country. The majority said that reading best fits the statute’s text, structure, history and purpose, as well as three decades of consistent application. It stressed that immigration law has long distinguished between people seeking entry at the border and people who have already entered, even unlawfully. The court also said the government’s construction would make other statutory language redundant, sit uneasily with later amendments including the Laken Riley Act and create serious constitutional questions.

The scale described in the opinion is striking. The majority said more than 500 federal district judges had rejected the government’s new reading in more than 20,000 individual cases. A February Reuters analysis, conducted earlier in the litigation surge, found more than 20,200 habeas petitions, at least 4,421 rulings against ICE and roughly 700 Justice Department lawyers assigned to immigration cases. Reuters reported then that ICE detention had reached about 68,000 people, about 75% above the level when Trump returned to office. Those figures predate Thursday’s ruling, but they show why a dispute that began with individual bond requests has become a major test of executive power, detention capacity and the federal courts’ workload.

The majority did not hold that every noncitizen has a constitutional right to release, nor did it resolve the petitioners’ due-process claims on an independent constitutional ground. It decided the case through statutory interpretation, using constitutional concerns as one reason to reject the broader reading. The court emphasized that the detainee bears the burden at a standard bond hearing to show that he or she is not dangerous and is not likely to flee. That distinction matters: eligibility for a hearing creates a procedure, not a presumption that ICE custody must end.

A sharp dissent and a widening split

Judge Allison Rushing dissented. She argued that Congress deliberately changed the statutory language in 1996, replacing older references to people arriving at ports of entry with the broader term “applicant for admission.” On her reading, that term includes people who entered without being lawfully admitted, even if they have lived inside the United States for years. Rushing wrote that the majority allowed its concerns about the policy’s moral consequences to displace the statute Congress enacted. Her dissent also maintained that removal procedures and constitutional limits on prolonged detention remain available even if the mandatory-detention provision applies.

Thursday’s decision places the Fourth Circuit with the First, Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh circuits in rejecting the administration’s categorical no-bond rule for this group. Earlier appellate decisions show how quickly the balance shifted. The Second Circuit rejected the policy in April, including in an opinion written by a Trump appointee. The Eleventh Circuit followed in May. The Fifth and Eighth circuits accepted the government’s statutory interpretation, although a different Fifth Circuit panel later imposed a ninety-day limit unless a detainee receives a hearing. The result is not a simple red-state versus blue-state divide; different panels and different legal theories have produced overlapping rules even within a circuit.

What happens next

The administration does not need to start a new path to the Supreme Court. In June, Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a review petition arising from the Sixth Circuit’s rejection of the same policy, telling the justices that detention prevents people from evading hearings and helps ensure removal. The Fourth Circuit’s decision is not the case currently before the justices, but its 9-2 accounting of the numbered circuits makes the split more mature and the national stakes clearer. The court can grant or deny review of the Sixth Circuit case, ask for further briefing or wait for another petition; it has not yet issued a merits ruling settling the question.

For now, the practical effect is uneven. A long-term resident detained after an unlawful entry has strong appellate precedent supporting access to a bond hearing across most of the country, but the statutory route remains narrower in the Fifth and Eighth circuits. DHS told the Associated Press that it remains confident in its legal position and noted that Supreme Court review has been requested. The government could also seek rehearing before the full Fourth Circuit, though the panel’s opinion remains controlling unless stayed or reversed.

The immediate next steps will therefore occur on two tracks. District judges and immigration courts within the Fourth Circuit will have to apply Thursday’s rule to new and pending detention challenges, while the Supreme Court decides whether to take the existing petition and impose one national interpretation. Until then, the confirmed change is substantial but limited: a ninth appellate court has rejected blanket no-bond detention for long-term residents arrested in the interior, strengthening access to hearings without deciding whether any particular person may remain in the United States.