Departing from decades of consistent practice across presidential administrations, the Trump Administration instituted a new policy regarding immigrants who live in the United States but who entered the country without legal inspection. Under this new policy, the government is incarcerating all such people while deportation proceedings are brought against them, instead of providing bail hearings in which a neutral judge decides whether a particular individual is a flight risk or threat to the public. As a result, countless people have been detained by the government without any opportunity for a hearing and without the government persuading an impartial decisionmaker that detention is necessary.

One of these individuals is Juan Carlos Sanchez Alvarez, who has lived in this country for over two decades. Mr. Sanchez Alvarez was detained after a traffic stop and sent to immigration detention without a bond hearing, where he has been held for over four months. He challenged the government’s policy in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan, which held that the policy violated immigration law. Though hundreds of judges around the country have agreed that the new policy is unlawful, the Trump Administration appealed the decision to the Sixth Circuit. In January 2026, the Constitutional Accountability Center filed an amicus brief explaining why the Trump policy, even if it were authorized by federal law (which it is not), violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

First, noncitizens residing in the United States have the same constitutional protection against arbitrary imprisonment that citizens do. Unlike constitutional provisions that refer to “citizens,” the Fifth Amendment declares that no “person” shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law. The Supreme Court has long held that this sweeping safeguard covers noncitizens who are within the United States, regardless of their legal status or whether they entered the country without permission. This principle is faithful to the Amendment’s deliberately worded text and to the Framers’ original understanding, both of which reflected a legal tradition in which noncitizens had the right to protect their persons and property just like citizens did, and were detained only under the same circumstances as citizens.

Second, Supreme Court precedent does not allow categorical detention of every person who entered the country without legal inspection. Outside of a narrow set of circumstances inapplicable to the policy at hand, the Court has never permitted mandatory detention without bond hearings during deportation proceedings. In such proceedings, the Court has repeatedly held that due process requires noncitizens to receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before being deprived of their liberty.

Finally, denying bail hearings to every person who entered the country without inspection violates the Due Process Clause. As the Supreme Court has explained, freedom from imprisonment “lies at the heart” of the liberty that the Clause protects, and detention without trial is a “carefully limited exception” to that freedom, which must be accompanied by strong procedural protections to guard against mistaken or unjustified detention. Accordingly, the government typically may imprison people without a criminal trial only by persuading an impartial decisionmaker of the need for detention after a fair hearing. This rule protects all people in the United States, regardless of their legal status. The government therefore cannot indiscriminately imprison noncitizens without showing the need for detention in a fair hearing.