Politico: ICE’s detention policy won at the 5th Circuit. Then judges found another way to reject it.

Jessie Blaeser and Kyle Cheney for Politico report that, despite a February ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upholding ICE’s blanket detention policy, lower courts "have overwhelmingly continued to reject ICE’s detention policy. Instead of labeling the policy a violation of the law — an interpretation taken off the table by the 5th Circuit decision — those judges have concluded that ICE has violated detainees’ constitutional due process rights, [which] the appeals court didn’t address."

A POLITICO analysis found that judges in Texas and Louisiana have ordered bond hearings or release of ICE detainees more than 1,200 times on due process grounds since the appeals court’s ruling. "That’s nearly 60 percent of all immigration detention rulings in the 5th Circuit since the Feb. 6 decision. The 5th Circuit is now considering whether ICE detainees subject to ICE’s `mandatory detention' policy are owed the due process that these district court judges decisively say they are."