ICE: Many Immigrants To Lose Bond Rights

The change was implemented last week after the Department of Homeland Security.

The Trump administration has significantly restricted the ability of individuals facing deportation to be released from immigration detention, marking a new step in its broad immigration enforcement efforts, sources familiar with the change told CBS News.

By reinterpreting a 1990s-era immigration law, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now directing its attorneys to argue in court that people who entered the U.S. illegally are not eligible for bond.

In the past, ICE’s mandatory detention policy primarily applied to recent border-crossers and noncitizens with certain criminal convictions.

Immigrants who had been living unlawfully in the U.S. for years were often granted bond hearings, where they could try to convince a judge they weren’t a flight risk and should be allowed to remain free while their deportation cases proceeded.

Under the revised policy, those individuals will no longer have access to bond hearings. Instead, their only path to release will be through “parole” granted by ICE — not by an immigration judge.

The change was implemented last week after the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Justice Department, “revisited its legal position on detention and release authorities,” according to one source who reviewed parts of a memo outlining the new approach.

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