A federal appeals court on Thursday allowed the extension of a Biden-era consent decree governing the use of warrantless immigration arrests, but hundreds of immigrants slated for release under a lower court’s order will remain detained under the opinion.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the 2-1 opinion but stayed their order for 14 days to give the government time to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The decision was a mixed bag for both the civil rights advocates who argued the case and for the Trump administration’s hardline immigration enforcement tactics. While the court allowed the consent decree’s extension, it took a narrower view of what constitutes a “warrantless” arrest. And it rejected the Trump administration’s legal interpretation that all immigrants in the U.S. illegally are subject to mandatory detention.
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The appeals court ruled on two orders from U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings in response to a lawsuit alleging Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly violated a 2022 federal consent decree restricting the use of warrantless arrests.
Read more: Court scrutiny of ICE mounts as judge rules warrantless arrests violated order
Cummings had sided with the civil rights groups who brought the lawsuit, faulting immigration agents’ new policy of carrying blank warrant forms and filling them out at the scene of an arrest.
The judge ruled the use of what are known as I-200 warrants is “explicitly designed” to get around the requirement that agents have probable cause before arresting an immigrant lacking permanent legal status. But the appellate court pushed back on portions of that ruling.
Release of immigrants stayed
In November, Cummings ordered the Trump administration to release hundreds of immigrants to electronic monitoring after determining they may have been detained without warrants. His order affected 13 people “whom both parties agree were arrested in violation” of the law and about 442 people who were “potentially” arrested in violation, according to Thursday’s opinion.
But the appellate court ruled that Cummings, a nominee of President Joe Biden, improperly certified a class of immigrants for release without providing individualized assessments.
Because of that, the appellate court ruled the government would “suffer irreparable harm” if the November order pertaining to field-issued I-200 warrants was allowed to stand.
Judge John Lee wrote the majority believed the Trump administration would likely win its argument that the district court improperly rejected the use of I-200 warrants. Lee was joined in the majority opinion by Judge Doris Pryor, both Biden nominees.
“But, based on this preliminary record, we read the Consent Decree to cover only those individuals whose arrests are effectuated in the absence of any warrant (I-200 or otherwise),” Lee wrote.
Mandatory arrests
Lee’s opinion also rejected the Trump administration’s interpretation that immigration law mandates that all undocumented immigrants are subject to mandatory detention.
The judge wrote the new interpretation “upends decades of practice” by claiming the law mandates detention of people already in the country as opposed to those who are apprehended when seeking to gain entry.
“Mandatory detention of all persons illegally in the United States only became official DHS policy when Acting Director of ICE Todd M. Lyons issued an internal memorandum on July 8, 2025 explaining that the agency “revisited its legal position,” the opinion noted.
Because of that, Lee wrote, the Trump administration is likely to lose its argument that those arrested without warrants are subject to mandatory detention.
The National Immigrant Justice Center, which argued for the plaintiffs, celebrated that portion of the decision as the first federal appeals decision “to address DHS’s unlawful interpretation of its detention authority.”
“The harmful policy, which has denied nearly everyone in ICE detention the opportunity to be released on bond or other conditions, has been central to the administration’s strategy to coerce people to give up their rights and accept ‘voluntary departure’ from the United States,” the NIJC said in a statement.
Consent decree extension
The underlying consent decree will remain in place pending Supreme Court review should the Trump administration choose to escalate the case.
Cummings ruled in October that the Biden-era consent decree should be extended an additional 118 days into February 2026 — nine months beyond its originally planned May 2025 expiration. That matched the number of days that the Department of Homeland Security had issued guidance to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents “unilaterally declaring that ICE’s obligations under the Consent Decree were terminated.”
Trump administration lawyers argued Cummings didn’t have the authority to do so. And they said that Trump shouldn’t be bound by the previous administration’s agreement. One dissenting judge — Thomas Kirsch II, a Trump appointee — agreed.
“Enforcing the promises of those elected officials requires an awareness that ‘[t]oday’s lawmakers have just as much power to set public policy as did their predecessors,’ and that ‘democracy does not permit public officials to bind the polity forever,’” Kirsch wrote in a dissent.
Read more: Appeals court weighs release of immigration detainees to electronic monitoring
Lee wrote that the consent decree doesn’t cause the irreparable harm necessary to issue an injunction because it “requires — rather than enjoins — Defendants’ compliance with a federal statute.”
“Accordingly, we cannot say that the district court abused its discretion when finding that Defendants’ substantial non-compliance with the Consent Decree constituted a significant change in circumstances that warranted a modification,” Lee wrote for the majority.
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