Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha
What's at Stake
The Supreme Court will hear Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha, stemming from our lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful policy that subjects millions of immigrants to mandatory detention without access to bond hearings.
Mandatory detention has played a key role in this administration’s cruel and lawless campaign of mass deportations. This case will decide whether the government can upend how our laws have been understood and applied for decades to lock up millions of immigrants without a chance to show there is no justification for their detention while they fight their removal.
The American Civil Liberties Union, New York Civil Liberties Union, Law Office of Paul O’Dwyer, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and MacArthur Justice Center are counsel in this case. Oral argument is expected in late February or early March 2027.
Summary
In July 2025, the Trump administration suddenly adopted a new radical misinterpretation of immigration law, declaring that anyone who entered the country without inspection must be detained without any individualized bond hearing. The administration’s mandatory detention policy does not take into account a person’s family or community ties or how long they have lived in the country.
Millions of immigrants are affected, including people who were previously released by the government, people who are eligible for legal status, as well as those with long-pending immigration applications who have been waiting years due to administrative backlogs.
This policy is cruel, inhumane, and illegal. That’s why it’s been repeatedly rejected by the federal courts, with hundreds of federal district judges ruling on thousands of related habeas petitions. Nine out of 10 of those judges have ruled that the administration’s misinterpretation of the law is illegal. When the government appealed those rulings, the ACLU and partners defended those decisions at the courts of appeals, where nine out of 11 circuits agree that the administration’s new policy violates the law.
Our client in this case, Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, has been living in the United States for over 20 years, has two U.S. citizen children, owns a home and a business, and has had an application for legal status pending since 2016 and permission to work legally in the U.S. Nonetheless, in September 2025, the Department of Homeland Security detained him under the government’s new no-bond policy.
A district court judge found this unlawful and ordered a bond hearing. An immigration judge then found that Mr. Barbosa da Cunha was not a flight risk or a danger to the community and ordered his release.
The Second Circuit unanimously affirmed the district court’s decision and agreed that the administration’s new policy violated existing immigration law. The vast majority of federal appeals courts have ruled against the policy, including the ruling at the center of this case.
The law is clear: Try as it might, the government cannot lock up immigrants for months or even years without giving them the basic protection of a bond hearing.