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By Billal Rahman
Immigration Reporter
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The Trump administration is reportedly pushing forward with plans to keep migrants who entered the U.S. unlawfully in federal custody by denying them bond hearings, according to a memo obtained by Reuters and The Washington Post.
Newsweek has contacted the White House, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment via email.
Why It Matters
As President Donald Trump directs his administration to deport millions of undocumented migrants, ICE is under mounting pressure to expand detention despite limited capacity.
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The new ICE policy could affect millions who entered the United States without legal status and are contesting their removal, potentially swelling the number of people held in already crowded facilities.
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What To Know
In a July 8 memo, Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of ICE, instructed officers that immigrants who entered the U.S. unlawfully should be detained "for the duration of their removal proceedings," which can last months or even years, The Washington Post reported.
The policy could affect millions of immigrants who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border over the past several decades.
The guidance directs ICE to treat certain immigration law provisions as "prohibitions on release" following an arrest. The memo noted that the policy change was "likely to be litigated," per Reuters.
It advised ICE prosecutors to "make alternative arguments in support of continued detention" during immigration court proceedings, the outlet reported.
Earlier this month, the GOP-controlled Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocates $45 billion to ICE to expand its detention capacity to almost 100,000 beds.
The agency is also set to receive $14 billion for transportation and removals, plus billions more to hire new deportation officers, form state and local partnerships, get technology upgrades, and increase retention incentives for ICE personnel.
The legislation will allocate funding for ICE to hire 10,000 additional agents, according to DHS.
What People Are Saying
Katherine Hawkins, a senior legal analyst at the Project on Government Oversight told Newsweek: "ICE is already detaining a record number of people in conditions that most experts that I've heard from say are the worst they've ever witnessed. This will make things even worse by expanding the number of people subject to 'mandatory detention' by including people never convicted of a crime, who may have lived in the United States for decades and who have U.S. citizen spouses and children."
Tom Jawetz, a former Department of Homeland Security official in the Biden administration, told Reuters about the new policy: "[It is] a radical departure that could explode the detention population."
Greg Chen, the senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told The Washington Post: "This is their way of putting in place nationwide a method of detaining even more people."
Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports a "low-immigration vision," told The Washington Post: "Detention is absolutely the best way to approach this, if you can do it. It costs a lot of money, obviously."
Update 7/16/25, 9:42 a.m. ET: This article was updated with a comment from Katherine Hawkins.
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