Federal Appeals Court in Colorado finds ICE "no bond" policy unlawful, orders release of detainee

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled late Tuesday that a man who's lived in the U.S. for more than two decades, detained for more than eight months by ICE, must be released, and that an ICE guidance, issued in July 2025, denying bond to all detainees who entered the country illegally, is unlawful.

The court wrote that no "class-wide findings exist here that would justify mandatory detention of every single admitted noncitizen." It ordered the release of Rigoberto Santillan-Quiroz, who is married to a legal permanent resident and has a U.S. citizen daughter.

Over the past year, the University of Denver Court Transparency Project has observed hundreds of hearings at the ICE detention center in Aurora, which is operated by the private prison firm GEO. Researchers found that the barrier to obtaining a bond hearing is high, and that when a hearing is scheduled, detainees are denied bond in more than 76% of cases.

"This is a huge victory for thousands of people currently being held without access to bond in immigration detention centers across Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. These individuals are now entitled to have the bond hearings that should result in release for many after months of being wrongfully held by ICE," said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado legal director. "This ruling from the Tenth Circuit sends a message that the Trump administration cannot unilaterally change the law and create unlawful policies that violate the rights of immigrants in our country and deny them fundamental fairness and due process." 

A year ago, the Trump administration sought to dramatically curtail the ability for those facing deportation to be released from immigration detention. By reinterpreting an immigration law from the 1990s, ICE instructed officials to argue in immigration court that detainees facing deportation are not eligible to be released on bond if they entered the U.S. illegally.

CBS Colorado reached out to ICE and DHS for a response to Tuesday's ruling and is awaiting a reply. ICE previously said that the "guidance closes a loophole to our nation's security based on an inaccurate interpretation of the statute. It is aligned with the nation's long-standing immigration law", and that the administration is "now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe."

The Tenth Circuit ruling found that "It is easy to imagine why Congress might not have wanted to extend mandatory detention into the country's interior… Perhaps Congress was worried that there were insufficient resources to detain all noncitizens in the interior, even if there were sufficient resources, humanitarian reasons counseled against such detention since noncitizens in the interior had likely established intimate connections with their friends, neighbors, and communities…. Due process requires that whenever the Government detains somebody, it must have a good reason for doing so."

It further stated that the government's interpretation of the statute "would pose grave constitutional problems because there is little justification, let alone a strong one, for detaining every one of the millions of unadmitted noncitizens in the country."