10,000 Federal Court Rulings vs Trump/Miller Immigration Actions

Trump’s unprecedented detention policy, which is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court, infuriated lower courts in ways no other modern issue has. It ruptured the relationship between the Justice Department and the judiciary; pitted the administration against itself; and upended innumerable lives — not just of the people swept up by immigration agents, but of their spouses and children, many of whom are U.S. citizens.

POLITICO is tracking the tens of thousands of detention cases that have flooded the system since ICE adopted its detention policy last July. Today we are releasing a full database of those rulings, giving the public an opportunity to see under the hood of our reporting — which has documented the courts’ lopsided results, ICE’s tactics for defying judges’ orders and the rising tensions between the judiciary and the Trump administration.

The trend is clear from every angle. The administration has lost nearly 10,400 of the cases that have been decided, and prevailed in about 1,200. While some judges have heard more cases than others, the overwhelming majority of judges — more than 425 — have reached the same conclusion. Even a majority of Trump-appointed judges have sided against the administration….

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Many judges hearing these cases have run out of words to express their frustration with what they see as a wreckage of lives and of laws.

“Beyond the reach of ordinary legal description,” one judge wrote. “It is an assault on the constitutional order.”

‘This isn’t how things are supposed to work in America’

These more than 10,000 cases include a nursing mother who was detained despite active refugee status and another mother separated from her one-year-old child and released from custody only when her son landed in the hospital. They include parents of U.S. military servicemembers, trafficking victims or witnesses, a 5-year-old boy detained by ICE on his way home from school.

Judges who have handled dozens of detention cases have described deepening frustration with ICE’s relentless detention drive and its defiance of court orders.

“This isn’t how things are supposed to work in America,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gary Brown, a Trump appointee based in New York, in the case of a man whose lawful status was revoked after ICE arrested him. “Unquestionably, the laws of human decency condemn such villainy.”….

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An unprecedented policy

Presidents’ signature initiatives often end up in court. But this flood of adverse rulings is unique — a never-before-seen reaction to a never-before-seen policy.

Federal law requires the detention of “applicants for admission” to the U.S. who are “seeking admission” to the country. Every previous administration has interpreted the provision to apply primarily to people who were apprehended at the border — until last year. In a July 8, 2025 memo, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons said that millions of immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years would now be treated as “seeking admission” to the country, subjecting them to mandatory detention without the opportunity for bond….

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Though the policy shift on mandatory detentions has driven the nationwide surge in emergency lawsuits, it’s not the only category of cases that has led to judicial pushback. POLITICO’s database also includes thousands of cases in which judges concluded that ICE had violated its own rules, deprived people of due process or held people for unconstitutionally lengthy periods without a realistic prospect of actually deporting them….

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“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, a Clinton appointee based in Texas, wrote in a three-page ruling ordering the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos.

“And the rule of law be damned.”…..

More…

image of 5 year old Liam Ramos….KTVZ