BREAKING: Trump admin can hold illegal aliens facing deportation WITHOUT bond: 5th Circuit Court of Appeals

The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that illegal immigrants arrested in the interior can be held in custody without bond throughout the duration of removal proceedings. The 11-6 en banc decision was issued on Friday.

The ruling comes in response to district court judges ordering the release of hundreds of detained illegal immigrants on claims of due process violations. The petitioners were three foreign nationals "who had been living unlawfully in the United States for many years" and sought habeas relief "on the ground that their detention violated their right to due process" under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, according to the complaint.

All three sought relief, and the district court judges agreed in each case. The courts ordered their release and barred federal authorities from further detaining them without first conducting bond hearings and individual dangerousness risk assessments.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judges wrote in their decision: "We now conclude that Petitioners were not entitled to individual hearings on their dangerousness or flight risk before they could be lawfully detained by immigration authorities pending their removal proceedings. Moreover, the duration of Petitioners' detention presented no constitutional issues warranting habeas relief. Accordingly, we reverse the district courts' decisions and vacate their grants of habeas relief."

The en banc decision contended that illegal immigrants are not entitled to the same liberties as American citizens.

"Petitioners anchor their entitlement to due process in the Fifth Amendment's right to 'liberty,'" the decision continues. "They reason that because their right to 'freedom from physical restraint' is a core liberty interest enumerated in the amendment, Congress may not abridge their due process rights before depriving them of that interest. Relatedly, they urge that this court's task is to vindicate their substantive right to liberty, not to recognize a novel substantive due process right."

"But petitioners frame their asserted liberty interest at too high a level of abstraction. 'Life in the United States, though highly prized, cannot be defined as a universal liberty,'" the judges wrote, citing a previous Texas court decision. "It is at best doubtful that Petitioners may assert an unfettered liberty interest in 'freedom from physical restraint' as unadmitted aliens, because such an interest runs headlong into Congress's plenary power...That power allows Congress to 'make rules' in the immigration context 'that would be acceptable if applied to citizens.'"

The decision continues, "Petitioners' proffered cases referencing the enumerated right to physical liberty are not to the contrary—indeed, they are manifestly inapt because, with one exception we discuss infra, they pertain to the rights of American citizens, not unadmitted aliens. Add to the equation that the Supreme Court has long held that aliens do not gain a blanket 'liberty' interest by entering the United States or by continuing to reside here after entry...Petitioners identify no other liberty interest akin to the one they invite the court to espouse, in which the person holding the right can vindicate it by simply walking out of detention. In other words, to the extent Petitioners seek to vindicate a liberty interest to be free from physical restraint in the most abstract sense, they can do so at any moment by agreeing to leave the country."

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decides cases in the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The decision is seen as a victory for the Trump administration and the president's mass deportation agenda.