Kristi Noem addressing members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on January 17, 2025 (Maxim Elramsisy/Shutterstock.com)
President Donald Trump's policies cracking down on undocumented immigrants by ramping up ICE authorities are facing sustained and growing push back from judges, according to a new analysis from Politico, including several that were appointed by him.
Politico's reporting on Friday concerned a policy Trump instituted back in July, calling for all individuals facing deportation proceedings to be jailed without the possibility of seeking a release. Though the Trump administration has defended its crackdown by claiming that it is being applied to dangerous and violent criminals, Politico noted that many of the immigrants targeted by this new policy "have lived in the U.S. for years, and sometimes decades, without incident and have been pursuing asylum or other forms of legal status."
The response to this rule sparked a "tidal wave of emergency lawsuits" claiming it violated immigration laws and immigrants' due-process rights. As of Friday morning, when its piece was published, Politico found that in an overwhelming percentage of these lawsuits, judges ruled against Trump's policy, with a good number of them being judges he himself appointed.
At least 225 judges have ruled in more than 700 cases that the administration’s new policy, which also deprives people of an opportunity to seek release from an immigration court, is a likely violation of law and the right to due process," the report explained. "Those judges were appointed by all modern presidents — including 23 by Trump himself — and hail from at least 35 states, according to a Politico analysis of thousands of recent cases."
The rate at which legal opposition to Trump's immigrant detention policy has grown is also considerable, with the number of judges who have ruled against the administration doubling in just the last month.
The scale of the push back feels even greater when considering the inverse: Politico found that only eight judges in the entire country, six of whom were Trump appointees, ruled in favor of the administration's position.
Judges have also grown "exasperated" by the volume of litigation flowing into their courts as a result of Trump's policy, making it difficult for them to keep up.
“The Court is unable to remain current on all new case authority supporting the Court’s conclusion, given the continued onslaught of litigation being generated by [the administration’s] widespread illegal detention practices,” U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder, a federal judge in California originally appointed by Bill Clinton, said in a comment from last week.
“Dozens of district courts across the nation — with more each day — have rejected DHS’s expansion of … mandatory detention,” U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill, another Clinton appointee in Idaho. “This court joins the overwhelming majority.”