Tenth Circuit rules ICE cannot detain interior immigrants without a bond hearing

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on June 30 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot hold immigrants arrested inside the country without a bond hearing, and ordered the government to give a Colorado man a hearing or release him within seven days.

The decision in Quiroz v. Mullin rejected a policy ICE adopted in July 2025 that treated people picked up in the interior as "applicants for admission" subject to mandatory detention. The court held that the mandatory-detention provision, Section 1225(b)(2)(A) of the immigration code, applies only to noncitizens seeking entry at the border, not to those already living in the country. People arrested in the interior, the court said, fall under Section 1226(a), which allows an immigration judge to set bond.

The ruling makes the Tenth Circuit the fourth federal appeals court to reject the administration's reading of the statute, a law Congress passed in 1996.

The case

Rigoberto Santillan-Quiroz entered the United States in 2006. ICE detained him in November 2025 after a traffic stop and held him without a bond hearing under the 2025 policy. A federal district court denied his habeas petition. The Tenth Circuit reversed and sent the case back with instructions to order a bond hearing or release him within seven days.

The panel concluded that the government's interpretation extended a border-screening provision to a population it was never written to cover. Under the administration's reading, anyone ICE targets for deportation could be classified as an applicant for admission and held without the chance to argue for release before an immigration judge.

A widening split

Federal appeals courts have divided on the policy. The Second, Sixth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have ruled against the administration. The Eighth Circuit ruled for the government. The Fifth Circuit first upheld the policy, then narrowed its own position in a later decision. More than 450 district judges have ordered the release of detained immigrants or required bond hearings, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Santillan-Quiroz.

A split among the federal circuits is the kind of conflict the Supreme Court often agrees to resolve. The Justice Department, which is defending the policy, is the losing party in the Tenth Circuit and can petition the Court to take up the question.

What it changes now

For immigrants held in the states covered by the Tenth Circuit, which include Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming, the ruling restores access to a bond hearing for people detained after interior arrests. It does not order anyone released outright. It requires that a judge weigh flight risk and danger and decide whether bond is warranted, the process that applied before the 2025 policy.

The outcome elsewhere depends on which circuit an immigrant is held in until the Supreme Court resolves the question or the administration changes the policy.