Introduction and summary
President Donald Trump regularly claims that his administration’s immigration agenda reflects a commitment to the rule of law. Under the banner of “Making America Safe Again,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) website announces that it “has delivered on President Trump’s mandate by restoring the rule of law.”1 White House executive orders, press releases, and even President Donald Trump’s welcome message to new American citizens similarly proclaim the administration’s commitment to upholding the rule of law.2 But so far during President Trump’s second term in office, the administration’s actions on immigration, as in so many other areas, have instead demonstrated an antipathy toward the rule of law.3 By repeatedly breaking the law and resisting accountability—violating constitutional rights, disregarding statutory limits imposed by Congress, and defying binding court orders—the Trump administration is degrading the rule of law.
This is not the first time. During the first Trump administration, federal courts repeatedly intervened to halt immigration policies that were plainly unlawful. The administration broke the law both by doing things that were substantively illegal and by doing things in an illegal way, cutting corners and failing to abide by important procedural requirements. From the forced separation of families at the border with no plans to reunite children with their parents to the attempted termination without lawful process of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and Temporary Protected Status designations that together shielded approximately 1 million people from deportation,4 the Trump administration defied important limits placed on the power of the executive by the Constitution and the nation’s system of checks and balances.
The rule of law depends on the idea that government power is constrained by legal rules, that those rules are applied consistently, and that no one—including the president—is above the law.
The rule of law depends on the idea that government power is constrained by legal rules, that those rules are applied consistently, and that no one—including the president—is above the law. When the federal government itself becomes a serial lawbreaker and additionally refuses to be reined in by the judiciary, the damage extends far beyond the immediate victims of unlawful policies and jeopardizes the safety and security of everyone. It corrodes public faith in institutions, weakens democratic norms, and signals that legal compliance is optional for those who hold the most power.
This report documents some of the ways in which the Trump administration’s relentless assault on immigrant communities throughout the country is degrading the rule of law. The examples identified in this report—including deportations without due process or any legal authority at all, the rise in indiscriminate and sometimes lethal force(including against U.S. citizens), and the refusal to comply with court orders—are not isolated events. They are part of a broader pattern of governing that treats legality as optional and judicial oversight as illegitimate. The report concludes by outlining core principles necessary to restore the rule of law in immigration: respect for due process, compliance with court orders, and a functional system designed to be enforced fairly and humanely.
The rule of law is foundational to American democracy
Months before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams penned a letter explaining that the best form of government is a government “of laws, and not of men.”5 An educational webpage maintained by the U.S. courts describes the rule of law as “a principle under which all persons, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are: Publicly promulgated[;] Equally enforced[;] Independently adjudicated[;] And consistent with international human rights principles.”6 The fact that the law acts as a check on the exercise of power by the government itself—even a majoritarian government—is central to the rule of law and what distinguishes it from “rule by law.”7 It is also what distinguishes the rule of law from slogans about “law and order,” which often emphasize punishment and coercion with little regard for concerns about legality, fairness, and constitutional constraint.8
The belief that officials in America’s system of government are committed to the foundational principle of the rule of law is one reason courts have historically extended the executive branch a degree of deference, often described as a “presumption of regularity.”9 Absent reason for doubt, courts frequently presume that officials are faithfully executing their constitutional oath, acting with proper motives, and generally proceeding in a professional manner that comports with the law. But that presumption is not unconditional. When the government repeatedly demonstrates contempt for legal constraints, misleads courts, or treats judicial orders as optional, the foundation for such deference collapses.10 What remains is not a strong executive faithfully executing the law but an unchecked one eroding the very system that legitimizes its authority.
Degrading the rule of law by routinely breaking the law
At every stage of the immigration enforcement process—from conducting unlawful searches and arrests, to carrying out deportations without due process or any legal authority at all, to facilitating the imprisonment abroad of people already removed from the United States—the Trump administration has demonstrated a disregard for the law. That the examples provided below are not exhaustive illustrates both the scope and scale of the administration’s assault on the rule of law in immigration.
Deportations without due process under the Alien Enemies Act
In the immigration space, few areas illustrate the Trump administration’s disregard for legal constraints more clearly than its approach to deportation. For more than 100 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that deportation may result in “loss of both property and life, or of all that makes life worth living,”11 and that “[d]eportation can be the equivalent of banishment or exile.”12 For that reason, the due process clause of the Constitution guarantees every “person” the right to notice and an opportunity to be heard before the government deprives them of liberty.13 Just last year, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that this basic constitutional requirement of notice and a hearing applies when the government seeks to remove a noncitizen from the country. The issue arose in a lawsuit challenging the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to quickly detain and remove without any process more than 100 Venezuelan nationals.14
The Alien Enemies Act was enacted in 1798 to permit the executive branch to remove nationals of a “hostile nation” in the event of a declaration of war or an “invasion or predatory incursion.”15 While the authority had been invoked only three times in the nation’s history—each time in connection with an actual declared war—President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelan nationals alleged to be members of a gang, Tren de Aragua.16
Although the Supreme Court nearly 80 years ago affirmed that federal courts have jurisdiction to interpret the statute,17 the Trump administration has argued in court that the president’s decision to invoke the Alien Enemies Act is completely unreviewable. Standing before a panel containing every active judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in January 2026, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign responded to a hypothetical question by agreeing that if the president proclaimed that a group of popular British musicians coming into the United States constituted an “invasion,” he would be authorized to detain and deport such musicians as enemy aliens, and courts would have no jurisdiction to review any of those actions.18 When asked whether he understood that the question was meant to describe the arrival of The Beatles in 1964 and other British rock groups that followed—and was therefore a “fanciful” question intended to test the limits of the government’s argument—Ensign confirmed that he understood the question and held firm that such a proclamation would be both lawful and unreviewable.19
Although the en banc panel’s decision is pending, the original panel concluded that the Venezuelan nationals who brought the case were likely to establish that the administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act in the clear absence of any declaration of war or actual invasion or predatory incursion was unlawful.20 And the Supreme Court previously held that the failure to provide the Venezuelan nationals designated “alien enemies” adequate notice and the opportunity to challenge the designation prior to removing them violated their due process rights.21
Illegal deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador
The more than 100 Venezuelans unlawfully designated and removed as “alien enemies” by the Trump administration were not deported to Venezuela but instead were sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center known as CECOT, a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador, where some were reportedly told that the only way out would be “in a body bag.”22 Roughly the same number of men, some of whom remain imprisoned there after more than a year, were similarly removed to CECOT using other immigration authorities.23 The government of El Salvador, which was paid nearly $5 million by the United States to accept and imprison indefinitely the more than 260 men,24 produced and posted on social media shocking videos showing the men marched off the planes, hurried into the facility, forced to the ground to have their heads shaved, and thrown in overcrowded cells.25 After four months, the Venezuelan men were returned to their country, where they displayed the physical evidence of torture and sexual abuse and reported significant psychological distress.26
The U.S. government’s complicity in facilitating the lengthy and inhumane imprisonment of these men—in conditions that would have violated basic constitutional safeguards for civil immigration detention in the United States—raises serious legal concerns. The government has authority to detain noncitizens in the United States while removal proceedings are pending and for the purposes of carrying out a final removal order, but the government has never explained under what authority it could pay El Salvador to imprison people after removal has been completed.
Additionally, the two flights that took these men to El Salvador were carried out in open defiance of a court order. A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the government to ensure that none of the individuals was turned over to the custody of El Salvador, whether that meant grounding flights that had not yet taken off, turning around those in the air, or preventing individuals from deplaning.27 According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem personally ordered that the men be transferred to the custody of El Salvador notwithstanding the court’s oral order and a subsequent written order prohibiting the removal of the men from the United States.28 The government’s decision to defy the court order resulted in the initiation of criminal contempt proceedings by Chief Judge James Boasberg, the district court judge who issued the order.29 Although a divided panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently reversed Boasberg’s order and terminated criminal contempt proceedings,30 the attorneys representing the Venezuelan nationals have requested review by the full circuit court, explaining that “the panel’s ruling has profound implications for the rule of law.”31
Not all of the individuals sent to CECOT on these flights were Venezuelan nationals. One individual, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is a Salvadoran national who, during the first Trump administration, had received an order protecting him from being deported to El Salvador based on an immigration court finding that he would likely be persecuted in that country.32 With the help of his U.S. citizen wife and children, Abrego Garcia challenged his unlawful removal to El Salvador, and a DOJ attorney conceded that the removal to that country was both in error and illegal.33 Although the U.S. government ultimately complied with a court order that it facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, its subsequent conduct has bordered on persecution: It targeted him for a vindictive prosecution on a charge that was recently dismissed as an “abuse of prosecuting power”; is threatening to deport Abrego Garcia to Eswatini, Uganda, and Liberia (even as Abrego Garcia has reluctantly signaled he could be amenable to removal to Costa Rica); and attempted to use such third-country removals to pressure him to forgo his right to a trial and instead plead guilty to the criminal charge.34 A federal judge ordered his release from immigration custody, finding that he was being detained “without lawful authority” and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had “affirmatively misled” the court when it claimed that Costa Rica was unwilling to “accept the transfer” of Abrego Garcia.35 The government attorney who correctly conceded that Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was unlawful and later refused to sign a brief describing Abrego Garcia as a member of the MS-13 gang and a terrorist was placed on administrative leave and then fired.36 As of April 16, 2026, dozens of the Salvadoran nationals condemned to CECOT by the Trump administration in March and April 2025 remain imprisoned there, seemingly without recourse.37
Deportations of people who cannot lawfully be deported
Deportations in defiance of court orders—or in the absence of a final, executable removal order—have become unfortunately common over the course of President Trump’s second term.
In February 2025, ICE deported a Guatemalan man to Mexico without giving him a required screening to see whether he feared persecution or torture even though he had previously been kidnapped and raped in that country.38 Last fall, DHS arrested a woman during a worksite raid and quickly deported her to Guatemala even though she had a pending appeal in connection with her application for asylum and therefore could not lawfully be removed.39 DHS also removed to Laos an individual who made a claim to U.S. citizenship even after a federal judge entered a temporary restraining order preventing the government from carrying out the removal.40 The same thing happened around Thanksgiving in a highly publicized case involving the detention and deportation of a college freshman who was flying home to Texas to see her family over the holidays.41 Shortly after her detention, a federal judge ordered that she not be removed from the country for at least 72 hours to provide the court additional time to consider her case.42 Nevertheless she was deported the following day.43 Also in 2025, three families protected by the court-ordered settlement agreement resolving the legal challenge to the first Trump administration’s family separation policy were unlawfully removed from the country.44 The federal judge overseeing the case observed that “[t]he manner in which each of these removals was affected, in addition to being unlawful, involved lies, deception, and coercion,” and ordered that each family be returned to the United States.45 In February 2026, a Cuban national similarly was removed to Mexico notwithstanding a court order prohibiting his removal; the government blamed a “communication error.”46 These cases of deportations in defiance of court orders and more are now being tracked in a database containing hundreds of instances in which federal court orders issued in immigration cases have been ignored by the Trump administration.47
Abrego Garcia was not even the only person removed to El Salvador in violation of a protective court order and imprisoned in CECOT. DHS similarly deported a Venezuelan man who had applied for asylum in the United States.48 In his case, a court-ordered settlement agreement specifically protected him and others like him from being deported while their asylum applications were pending. DHS also deported a Salvadoran man to El Salvador despite having assured the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that he would not be deported and in defiance of a court order preventing his removal. The government conceded that the removal was caused by “a confluence of administrative errors.”49
Unlawful searches, arrests, and increasing—and increasingly lethal—uses of force
The degradation of the rule of law is also evident in the administration’s aggressive and at times unlawful actions during immigration enforcement operations around the country. In May 2025, the acting head of ICE issued a memorandum stating that officers can forcibly enter the homes of noncitizens subject to final orders of removal with only an administrative (nonjudicial) warrant.50 Although the memo purports to be based on a legal determination of the DHS Office of the General Counsel and is directed to “all ICE personnel,” a whistleblower complaint alleges that it was disseminated only to select DHS personnel who then verbally briefed officers on the directive and allowed copies of the memo to be reviewed only if they were returned afterwards.51 The steps taken to shield from public view a policy directive that brushes aside core protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment runs directly contrary to the rule-of-law notion that rules should be promulgated publicly.52 U.S. citizens and immigrants whose homes were unlawfully invaded by DHS personnel are challenging the warrantless home entry policy in court.53
By contrast, the federal government has done little to shield from public view the highly visible, violent, and terrifying actions that immigration officers are taking in communities around the country. Images and videos—many shot by observers but many recorded and posted by DHS itself—show masked officers smashing car windows,54 shooting into a family vehicle,55 firing pepper balls at protesters and clergy,56 and using physical force against individuals who pose no threat.57
The killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota in January 2026—captured on video so the world could see the administration’s real-time lies for what they were—are unthinkable tragedies, but also predictable consequences of the reckless and lawless approach to enforcement the administration has taken.58 In a carefully crafted and exhaustive opinion in November 2025, a federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois found that immigration enforcement personnel in Chicago repeatedly used indiscriminate force and retaliated against nonviolent demonstrators, religious practitioners, and members of the press.59 The opinion supported a preliminary injunction order generally prohibiting DHS personnel from taking a variety of actions, including using riot control weapons, tear gas, pepper spray, and hands-on physical force except where objectively necessary.60 Although Gregory Bovino, then the commander-at-large with the U.S. Border Patrol in charge of the aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, described the use of force there as “more than exemplary,” the court concluded that he personally lied about the use of force in one incident in which he ordered the use of tear gas.61 Bovino was also in charge of the operations in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and elsewhere, and was relieved of command in Minneapolis after the killings of Good and Pretti and retired soon thereafter.62 Although the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed portions of the injunction pending appeal and later vacated the injunction following the conclusion of the immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, it credited the “voluminous and robust factual findings” of the district court.63
Rather than conduct a genuine investigation into these killings, the DOJ directed federal prosecutors to instead investigate the widow of Renée Good—a directive that drove several veteran prosecutors to leave government service64—and has withheld evidence from state and county officials who are attempting to conduct their own investigations, according to a recently filed lawsuit.65 The lawsuit also seeks access to evidence regarding the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan national, by a federal immigration agent just one week after Good’s killing. Although federal prosecutors initially responded by charging Sosa-Celis with having assaulted the federal officer who shot him, those charges were later dropped when clear evidence emerged that the agent “lied during sworn testimony.”66 In May 2026, a Minnesota county prosecutor brought criminal charges against the immigration agent involved in Sosa-Celis’ shooting.67
A recent ICE memo intended to dramatically expand warrantless arrests of immigrants encountered during—but not targeted in—roving patrols and other at-large operations68 threatens to increase the likelihood of violent confrontations such as these in the future.
Refusing to comply with court orders or otherwise evading accountability
Repeated acts of illegality can themselves degrade the rule of law, but the inability of courts to effectively hold lawbreakers accountable—including by providing meaningful remedy to individuals whose rights were violated—does still more damage.
Resisting orders to undo unlawful removals
In case after case, the government has vigorously resisted federal judges’ orders to facilitate the return of individuals unlawfully deported and has several times taken steps to frustrate such court orders. In the case of Abrego Garcia, where the government conceded that the removal had been unlawful, the government appealed a district court order to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled that the lower court “properly require[d] the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”69 The government fought another order that it return a Venezuelan asylum seeker illegally deported to CECOT by saying that it could not comply with the order because the man was in El Salvador’s custody and also that return was not warranted because the government had already decided not to give him asylum in any event.70
In some cases, the government’s resistance has allowed it to successfully avoid rectifying its unlawful removals. At the time of writing, the government still has not returned the putative U.S. citizen it deported to Laos in violation of court order, and the federal judge overseeing the case recently denied a motion to enforce that previous order despite finding that it had clearly been violated.71 In the case of the Cuban national illegally removed to Mexico in February, the federal judge overseeing the case is considering contempt sanctions based on the federal government’s ongoing failure to comply with an order requiring his return to the United States; in response to the DOJ arguing that the government of Mexico’s lack of cooperation was to blame for the months of delay, the federal judge responded that “[t]he government has not earned the benefit of the doubt here.”72 Similarly, despite an order by the 2nd Circuit in June 2025 that the government facilitate the return of the man deported in defiance of the court’s order,73 the government has yet to do so and instead has been ordered to file regular reports with the court regarding the man’s whereabouts and the efforts the government has taken and will take to facilitate his return; according to the first such report filed in July 2025 and subsequent reports, the man was confined at CECOT and appears to still be in Salvadoran custody.74 Although a federal judge recently ordered the government to facilitate the return of a Colombian woman deported to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) “despite that country’s prior statements that it could not provide for her complex medical needs,” the DOJ now says it cannot comply with the court order because the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a ban on people entering the country from the DRC due to the Ebola outbreak.75
In the case of the college student unlawfully deported, when the federal judge initially encouraged the government to “rectify the mistake” by returning her to the United States, the government said that it “respectfully decline[d]” to do so.76 When the judge then issued a civil contempt order requiring the government to facilitate her return to the country within 14 days,77 the government reportedly sent the student mixed messages about whether she would be immediately detained upon her return.78 Faced with this possibility, the student decided not to return and potentially subject herself to prolonged detention and her lawsuit was subsequently dismissed.79 Several months ago, the judge overseeing the class action lawsuit challenging the use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove hundreds of Venezuelans to CECOT ordered the government to propose steps for how class members would be able to challenge the application of the act to their individual cases as well as the invocation of the act itself. The court characterized the government’s response—which only objected in multiple ways to the court’s authority to order any such relief80—as evidence of a lack of “interest[] in participating in this process” and essentially telling the court “to pound sand.”81 As a result, the court ordered the government to facilitate the return to the United States of any of the men deported to El Salvador in defiance of court order who are now in El Salvador or elsewhere. The government has appealed that order, which is now paused until the resolution of that appeal.82
Each of these cases represents not just an individual injustice, but a systemic refusal by the Trump administration to respect legal constraints.
Undermining grants of protection through third-country removals and chain refoulement
In addition to deporting people in violation of court orders, including to countries to which immigration judges have specifically prohibited their removal based on the likelihood of persecution or torture, the administration is increasingly using written and unwritten agreements with third countries—often paired with money payments—to effectuate these illegal deportations.83 In 2025, DHS removed more than 30 third-country nationals to Ghana, many of whom had court orders protecting them from being removed to their country of nationality.84 Once in Ghana, however, these individuals were detained for a period of time before the large majority of them were forcibly removed to their home countries.85 Video surfaced of a longtime Maryland resident originally from Sierra Leone who had secured protection from deportation to that country in the United States before she was sent to Ghana. There, she was dragged across the floor, forced onto a bus, and returned to Sierra Leone.86 A bisexual Gambian man was similarly returned to his country of origin from Ghana despite an order from an immigration judge in the United States finding that he was more likely than not to be tortured in the Gambia.87
The refoulement—return of a person to a country where they fear for their life or freedom88—of people removed by the United States to Ghana is not an aberration. In November 2025, DHS removed nine Georgian, Mauritanian, Angolan, Ghanaian, and Eritrean nationals to Equatorial Guinea; all of the individuals had received orders of protection in the United States that were supposed to prevent them from being returned to their home countries due to the likelihood of persecution or torture.89 A second flight containing 20 third-country nationals who had similarly been granted protection from being returned to their countries of origin arrived in January 2026, and a third flight containing two Cameroonian and one Egyptian national arrived in late April.90 As of the date of publication and following detention in Equatorial Guinea, more than half of these individuals have been returned to their countries of persecution or torture, including one Mauritanian man who previously had escaped hereditary slavery in that country and one Ghanaian man previously granted withholding of removal by an immigration judge in the United States based on persecution related to his sexual orientation.91 According to a report by Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Equatorial Guinea received $7.5 million to accept these third-country nationals.92 Tens of millions of dollars more were sent to Rwanda, Eswatini, Palau, and El Salvador.93
Initial efforts in court to impose meaningful checks on these third-country removals were successful. A district court issued a preliminary injunction requiring that noncitizens receive a notice of removal to a third country and a meaningful opportunity both to raise a fear claim with respect to the third country and to challenge their removal.94 But the Supreme Court paused the injunction without explanation on its so-called shadow docket,95 so there are no protections from third-country removals while the lawsuit continues.
In the meantime, the administration has adopted a policy that fear screenings do not need to be provided to an individual being removed to a third country so long as that country has provided certain diplomatic assurances to the United States that the deported noncitizens will not be persecuted or tortured.96 In practice, these diplomatic assurances provide no real and enforceable check on the actions of the government of the third country. The result is a system that invites “chain refoulement”: The United States formally complies with a court order prohibiting removal to a particular country, only to send the individual to another country that promptly returns the individual to the place where they face harm.97 Federal courts have recognized this as a transparent end-run around clear legal constraints. In one case, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia described the government as taking actions “in disregard of or despite its obligations to provide individuals present in the United States with due process and to treat even those who are subject to removal humanely. These actions also appear to be part of a pattern and widespread effort to evade the government’s legal obligations by doing indirectly what it cannot do directly.”98
Nevertheless, because the lawsuit was filed after the plaintiffs had been removed to Ghana and plaintiffs’ request to prevent their imminent return to their countries of persecution would have implicated foreign policy concerns, Chutkan declined to grant relief. She concluded her opinion as follows: “The court does not reach this conclusion lightly. It is aware of the dire consequences Plaintiffs face if they are repatriated. And it is alarmed and dismayed by the circumstances under which these removals are being carried out, especially in light of the government’s cavalier acceptance of Plaintiffs’ ultimate transfer to countries where they face torture and persecution. But its hands are tied.”99 The inability or unwillingness of courts to hold the administration accountable for its actions or to provide relief to individuals whose rights are violated—even where the consequences are life-and-death—sorely degrades public faith in the U.S. system of checks and balances. Further, by using money payments and pressure tactics to partner with other countries to evade human rights treaties, the Trump administration’s actions also are degrading international protection rules—taking the assault on the rule of law globally.
Even where individuals have not yet been returned to their home countries following removal by the United States to a third country, many have been sent to countries where they have been imprisoned for long periods of time—at least long enough for public reporting and attention to move on from them. As of May 5, 2026, 17 of the 19 men deported to Eswatini remain in a maximum security prison—some since July 2025100—and several of the third-country nationals removed to Cameroon earlier this year also remain detained.101 As of April 2026, 6 of the 8 men sent to South Sudan remained in government custody more than nine months after their removal to that country.102
The administration is not removing people without notice to countries where they have no ties, are confined upon their arrival, and are returned to their countries of persecution in order to enforce the law; it is doing so to shock the conscience and spread fear.103
Defying orders checking the illegal expansion of mandatory detention
The administration has also sought to expand immigration detention beyond what the law allows. In July 2025, the acting director of ICE issued guidance asserting that all individuals who entered the country without inspection are subject to mandatory detention without the possibility of release on bond.104 The guidance recognizes no time limit on the application of mandatory detention, so an individual who entered the country without inspection 20 years ago and has been living, working, and raising a family without incident would be covered by the policy. The Board of Immigration Appeals, which conducts appellate review of immigration court decisions and is increasingly acting as an arm of the attorney general under whose authority it conducts its work,105 adopted this position and instructed immigration judges to deny bond hearings categorically.106
Federal courts around the country are overwhelmingly rejecting the idea that immigration authorities have discovered a massive mandatory detention authority that had gone entirely unrecognized in immigration law for nearly 30 years. Approximately 440 district court judges nominated by every president since Ronald Reagan—as well as panels of judges on the 2nd, 6th, and 11th Circuit Courts of Appeals107—have ruled in nearly 10,800 cases that the statute does not authorize such blanket detention.108 Divided panels of the 5th and 8th Circuit Courts of Appeals ruled in the government’s favor,109 but district courts in other circuits that have yet to rule have found those courts’ reasoning unpersuasive,110 and the issue continues to percolate in federal court. Additionally, the 5th Circuit is poised to soon decide whether the government’s new policy of detaining longtime residents of the country without the possibility of bond violates noncitizens’ Fifth Amendment due process rights.111
Additionally, in November 2025, a federal district court overseeing Maldonado Bautista v. DHS—a nationwide class action pertaining to this new mandatory detention policy—issued a declaratory judgment that the refusal to consider class members for bond violates their statutory and constitutional rights.112 When evidence was presented that immigration judges were continuing to refuse bond hearings for class members, the court issued a second order that both reiterated its class-wide declaratory judgment that the government’s no-bond policy was unlawful and vacated the policy under the Administrative Procedure Act.113
But even after this second order was issued, the Trump-appointed chief immigration judge overseeing the nation’s immigration court system sent an email to mid-level supervisors114 directing them to inform all immigration judges that the declaratory judgment did not have any effect and that the order could not compel immigration judges to ignore the Board of Immigration Appeals’ earlier ruling that the district court specifically held to be “contrary to law” and “no longer controlling.”115 The government’s refusal to follow the court’s class-wide final judgment has resulted in the need for many thousands of individuals to file petitions demanding either access to a bond hearing or outright release from detention. The judge overseeing the nationwide class action recently explained in response to one such petition that the flood of individual requests for relief overwhelming federal courts around the country are only happening because of the federal government’s “deliberate choice to continue defying the final judgment entered in Bautista.”116 Another judge who previously ordered the government to provide a bond hearing within seven days or release the noncitizen from custody issued an order in January noting that after nine days the individual had received neither action. The court explainedthat “[t]his is one of dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed to comply in recent weeks.”117 Two days later, the judge issued a subsequent order chronicling at least 96 violations of court orders in 74 cases in that month alone and explained that “[t]his list should give pause to anyone—no matter his political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”118 After reviewing hundreds of court orders in similar cases, a media report described the government’s systematic practice of defying court orders as involving missing court deadlines; failing to comply with court orders requiring the release of detainees; releasing individuals from detention without returning their personal property; and imposing conditions on their release when the court order authorized no such conditions.119 The report also described a pattern of ICE ignoring court orders prohibiting the transfer of certain immigration detainees across state lines—a practice that one federal judge in New Jersey said was happening in the state “at a rate of around three every two weeks.”120
Early this year, the administration’s expansion of mandatory detention reached yet another group of noncitizens that had not previously been subjected to it. In January 2026, ICE began arresting hundreds of lawfully admitted refugees in Minnesota for no reason other than that they had not yet obtained lawful permanent residence—never mind that many had applied for permanent residence but DHS had failed to act on the applications.121 In one such case, a nursing mother was arrested and whisked away from Minnesota to a Texas detention facility—like most of these refugees—even though she had filed her application on the very first day she was legally permitted to under longstanding law.122 To date, courts have rejected the government’s asserted authority to arrest and detain such refugees absent any efforts to pursue their removal.123
Circumventing a court-ordered hold on unlawful expedited removals
In early 2025, DHS issued a series of written policy directives exposing immigration parolees—people who went to ports of entry, typically with advance permission from DHS, and were inspected and authorized to come into the United States and remain here temporarily—to a form of deportation known as “expedited removal.”124 Congress created the expedited removal authority 30 years ago to quickly deal with people who were arriving at ports of entry without valid documents as well as certain people who had recently entered the country illegally and without inspection—not for people who already had arrived after being inspected and paroled into the country by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.125
Under these new policies, the government began to arrest immigration parolees when they appeared for regular removal proceedings in immigration courthouses across the country.126 A lawsuit127 challenging the government’s new written directives resulted in a court order pausing the policies on the grounds that, among other things, Congress nowhere authorized the use of expedited removal against individuals paroled into the country.128 Since then, however, DHS has continued to subject immigration parolees to expedited removal based on an old regulation that the district court had concluded was likely ultra vires (i.e., unauthorized by statute and illegal)129 but did not specifically order the government not to use.130 The continued use of expedited removal against immigration parolees based on a regulation the district court found was likely unlawful raises serious rule-of-law concerns. Courts frequently presume when there is no evidence to the contrary that executive branch officials will abide by legal determinations made by courts even when those determinations do not obligate the officials to do so.131 That is because courts traditionally have afforded government officials a “presumption of regularity,” trusting that they will endeavor to faithfully uphold their constitutional oath to execute the law.132 This administration’s repeated failure to do just that has spurred some courts to deny government officials this presumption.133
Restoring the rule of law in immigration
The Trump administration’s attack on the rule of law in immigration is not limited to discrete illegal acts and defiance of court-ordered restraints. It also takes the form of deliberate chaos—policies that create fear, uncertainty, and dysfunction, making the system harsher and less capable of serving the country’s interests. In less than one year, the Trump administration took steps to strip lawful status from more than 1.6 million people, disrupting not only their lives but those of their families, community members, fellow students, and coworkers.134 It has all but eliminated the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, effectively transforming it into a special migration pipeline for white South Africans;135 frozen the asylum system;136 halted the adjudication of benefits for nationals of dozens of countries;137 attempted to unilaterally redefine the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship;138 and imposed countless new restrictions on entry to the country.139 A recent policy change appears to strongly encourage U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to deny most applications for adjustment of status, which could make it harder, more expensive, and in some cases impossible for hundreds of thousands of people living in the United States to obtain lawful permanent resident status each year.140 Depending on how it is implemented, the policy could be enormously disruptive to families, businesses, and research institutions throughout the country.
The Trump administration’s attack on the rule of law in immigration also takes the form of deliberate chaos—policies that create fear, uncertainty, and dysfunction, making the system harsher and less capable of serving the country’s interests.
Most of these actions have been challenged in court—and the Supreme Court will soon issue a decision in the birthright citizenship case and on whether the Trump administration’s decisions to terminate Temporary Protected Status protections for people from Haiti and Syria are reviewable and, if so, lawful141—but the damage the actions are causing is independent of any unlawful conduct involved. The U.S. immigration system has been transformed—by design—into a model of dysfunction and cruelty after years of being a system that, despite its many flaws, brought families together, powered the American economy, extended hope and opportunity to people seeking to contribute their hard work and talents to this country, offered refuge to victims of persecution around the world, and breathed new life every day into the nation’s ever-vibrant society.
Conclusion
Restoring the rule of law in immigration requires more than reversing individual policies. It requires building a system that works as designed—one that is enforceable, humane, and grounded in respect for basic rights.142
That means recommitting to due process at every stage of enforcement; respecting the role of courts and complying with their orders; and abandoning policies that rely on cruelty and chaos rather than legality and effectiveness. It also means modernizing an outdated statutory framework, investing in adjudication capacity, and providing evidence-based lawful pathways tailored to meet the realistic needs of American society, American businesses, and American families that reduce unauthorized migration.143
A system built on legality and fairness is not only more just, it is more durable. Enforcement carried out according to clear rules and constitutional constraints is more likely to command public confidence and withstand political change. By contrast, a system that treats the law as optional invites backlash, judicial intervention, and lasting damage to democratic norms.
Of course, immigration is not the only arena in which the Trump administration has attacked the rule of law. The president indiscriminately pardoned and commuted sentences for January 6 insurrectionists—some of whom have since been charged with new violent offenses—including those who violently attacked U.S. Capitol police officers.144 These actions stand in stark contrast to the purge of dozens of career prosecutors who successfully brought those cases and to the politically motivated, failed indictment of six members of Congress with military experience who recorded a video reminding members of the military of their legal obligation to refuse illegal orders.145 Early in the administration, President Trump issued illegal executive orders targeting individual law firms for their clientele and has otherwise suppressed speech and lawful dissent by restricting media access and directing investigations into political enemies.146 Since September 2025, the Trump administration has regularly conducted lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean, dangerously and illegally abusing wartime powers,147 and during the war with Iran has made threats that violate the laws of war and encourage service members to commit war crimes.148 The Trump administration refused to provide food assistance that millions of families rely upon during the government shutdown, despite being legally obligated to draw upon the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s emergency contingency funds.149
This pattern of unlawful actions, defiance of court orders, and deliberate chaos reflects a broader governing philosophy that views legal constraints as nuisances rather than obligations. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” the president posted on social media in the opening weeks of his term.150
The choice is not between enforcement and lawlessness. It is between enforcement that respects the rule of law and enforcement that undermines it. The former strengthens democracy; the latter corrodes it from within. Restoring the rule of law in immigration and elsewhere is not a narrow or quaint policy goal, but a democratic imperative.
Author’s note: Author Tom Jawetz is one of the attorneys representing the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (“CHIRLA”) and other plaintiff organizations in the case CHIRLA v. Noem, discussed in this report. Jawetz also has signed onto an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of former senior government officials in two cases pending before the court regarding challenges to the Trump administration’s decisions to terminate Temporary Protected Status designations for Haiti and Syria.