Between November 2025 and February 2026, police stopped three Latino immigrants in Taylor, then contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who took custody of the men and placed them in deportation proceedings without an opportunity for a bond hearing.
The three men had crossed the Texas-Mexico border separately and had lived in the country as undocumented immigrants for 22, 15 and 14 years. In that time, they worked, started families and had no criminal records before they were detained.
Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez, Miguel Angel Gomez Alvarado and Alejandro Villegas Angel were eventually released from ICE custody after federal judges found that holding them without a chance for a bond hearing violated the men’s due process rights.
The Trump administration appealed, arguing that federal immigration law says undocumented immigrants should be held until deportation.
Their cases are now before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will decide on a key constitutional question amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation push: Do undocumented immigrants have the same right to challenge their detention as citizens and legal immigrants?
“The case is about some of our most fundamental rights in the Constitution,” said Gracie Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project, which is representing the three men. “The ability to be heard on something that implicates your liberty.”
For decades, there was no controversy: the federal government and courts have said undocumented immigrants have due process rights. Then last summer, the Trump administration argued that undocumented immigrants don’t have a right to challenge their detention, which has led to a historic and unprecedented number of immigrants in detention: more than 73,000, compared to an average of 28,000 during the Biden administration.
The detentions have also led to a historic number of lawsuits challenging immigrants’ detention. According to ProPublica, immigrants filed more habeas corpus petitions — nearly 47,000 — in the first 13 months of the second Trump administration than in the past three administrations, combined. Roughly one in five were filed in Texas federal courts.
Here’s what you need to know about immigrants’ due process rights and how the Trump administration is attempting to strip them away:
What is due process?
Under the U.S. Constitution, anyone accused of a crime has a right to know why a law enforcement officer is detaining, arresting or jailing them. The person also has a right to go before a judge to defend themselves.
For the past 30 years, undocumented immigrants have also been afforded these rights even when they are detained for immigration violations, which are civil cases rather than criminal. In immigration court, immigrants don’t have the right to an attorney like U.S. citizens do in the criminal court system.
“Immigration court is like traffic court but with death penalty consequences,” Willis said.
Still, immigrants have been given the option to appear in court, hear the federal government’s case for holding them, and request to be released while their case is pending.
In 1993, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”
What changed?
Under federal immigration laws, the government can quickly deport undocumented immigrants who recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without giving them a chance for a bond hearing. But for those who have lived in the U.S. for months or years before being detained, the law gives them the right to challenge their detention.
In July 2025, the Trump administration announced a policy change, saying that anyone who has been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — regardless of how long they’ve been in the country — would be detained until they are deported, without giving them a chance to go before an immigration judge to challenge their detention and request their release on bond.
This included immigrants who requested asylum or were allowed to enter the U.S. despite not having permanent legal status — a practice called parole, often given to asylum seekers while their cases are pending.
Asylum requests soared along with the number of people crossing the southern border, a trend that started during the first Trump administration and reached historic highs during the Biden administration — that number has plummeted in President Trump’s second term as the administration ramped up immigration enforcement and cut off access to asylum.
What have the courts said?
The change in policy has led to thousands of legal challenges in federal courts.
Politico found that more than 400 federal judges — appointed by presidents of both major political parties since Ronald Regan — have ruled in favor of immigrants’ right to due process in more than 5,000 cases since the policy change in July. In comparison, 41 judges have sided with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law in 250 cases, according to a Politico analysis of federal government data.
The Trump administration appealed some of the cases to higher courts, leading to competing rulings — three federal appeals courts have ruled against the administration, two have upheld its policy and one remains deadlocked.
In February, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Texas, issued a 2-1 ruling backing the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy.
In March, the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, said the Trump administration’s interpretation of immigration law is constitutional.
But in late April, the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the new policy was an unprecedented interpretation of immigration law that also raises constitutional concerns.
“The government’s interpretation (of immigration law) would send a seismic shock through our immigration detention system and society, straining our already overcrowded detention infrastructure, incarcerating millions, separating families, and disrupting communities,” Judge Joseph Bianco, a Trump appointee, said in the unanimous ruling from the three-judge panel. “If Congress meant to achieve such a radical break from the past, it would not have done so in such an indirect and ambiguous way.”
And more recently, the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, also rejected the Trump administration’s policy, saying that noncitizens “should have a forum to explain that their backgrounds and connections to their communities justify release on bond.”
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Chicago, deadlocked on the issue.
What’s next?
The cases are far from settled, and more legal challenges are being filed nearly every day by immigrants targeted by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
With the federal appeals courts divided, immigration lawyers expect the issue to land before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is still weighing whether Rodriguez, Gomez, and Villegas had a right to challenge their detention.
Willis, the National Immigration Project lawyer, said it’s important that immigrants keep that right.
“It is surprising to us when we see arguments from the government that people in these civil proceedings don’t have due process rights,” Willis said.
Disclosure: Politico has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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