Immigration Article of the Day: Challenging Mass Immigration Detention by Ingrid Eagly
Challenging Mass Immigration Detention by Ingrid Eagly, 50 Mich. St. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026).
Abstract
The first year of President Donald Trump's second term has been marked by unprecedented spending on growing immigration detention capacity across an overcrowded and substandard network of private detention facilities, local jails, state and federal prisons, military facilities, and extraterritorial detention sites. To fill this new detention space, the administration has advanced novel and legally tenuous grounds for detention that sweep increasing numbers of people into immigration custody, often utilizing deportation practices that bypass judicial review and deny access to bail. This Article examines the administration's unfolding efforts to transform the immigration detention system and analyzes emerging constitutional challenges-rooted in the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments-that limit detention's reach and question its legitimacy.
