The petition, filed Oct. 28, is the latest move in a legal fight that could affect tens of thousands of people currently held in federal immigration custody. At issue is whether immigrants arrested in the interior of the country — not at the border — can ask an immigration judge for release on bond while their deportation cases proceed.

The case centers on Jaciel Cirrus Rojas, who was 24 when ICE agents arrived at his Racine apartment in June 2025 looking for a previous tenant. Agents arrested Cirrus Rojas instead, calling him a "collateral" arrest. He entered the U.S. in 2018 without a visa, and Wisconsin court records show no criminal convictions under his name.

He spent most of the next nine months at the Dodge County Detention Center in Juneau, caught up in a White House policy that barred ICE detainees from posting bond — a break from decades of practice.

The 1996 Immigration Reform Act requires immigration authorities to detain without bond anyone found crossing the border without authorization. Previous administrations applied that rule narrowly, allowing many immigrants arrested inside the country to seek a bond hearing in immigration court. The Trump administration changed course in July 2025, when ICE Director Todd Lyons issued a new interpretation requiring no-bond detention regardless of where someone is arrested. The Board of Immigration Appeals later endorsed that reading.

With bond unavailable, thousands of detainees turned to federal district courts, filing habeas corpus petitions to challenge their detention. Those courts are part of the judicial branch and independent of the White House; when a judge grants such a petition, it typically orders an immigration court to hold a bond hearing. Wisconsin's Western and Eastern District courts have received more than 100 habeas petitions in the past year.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in Cirrus Rojas' favor in July, joining appellate courts in New York, Cincinnati, Denver, Atlanta and San Francisco in rejecting the policy. Judge Joshua Kolar, appointed by President Joe Biden, wrote for the majority that if Congress had required no-bond detention for all unlawful entrants without funding it, the immigration system could have been thrown "into chaos" and authorities "might have found themselves quickly overwhelmed by a colossal unfunded mandate to arrest and detain millions." Judge Diane Sykes, appointed by President George W. Bush, dissented alone, writing that "only the Supreme Court can bring uniformity and settle this question once and for all."

Cirrus Rojas left custody earlier this year after a federal judge in California vacated the mandatory detention rule, but the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit stayed that decision less than a month later. The 7th Circuit let his case proceed because federal authorities plan to detain him again.

"Nothing, absent our intervention, stops the government from making good on its promise," Kolar wrote. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, is now asking the justices to step in.

The Supreme Court agreed earlier this month to hear a separate mandatory detention dispute involving a Brazilian national arrested during a traffic stop in Massachusetts last September. DHS has asked the justices to hold Cirrus Rojas' case until they decide the Massachusetts one.

"The question of mandatory detention thus boils down to one question: Can we lock up noncitizens without giving them a day in court first?" said Jenifer Bizzotto, the Wisconsin attorney representing Cirrus Rojas. "The stakes could hardly be higher." Bizzotto said both cases "offer the Supreme Court the opportunity to affirm that the Constitution means what it says."

A ruling against the policy would let thousands of ICE detainees — at least those in circuits that side with the Trump administration — request bond hearings in immigration court. It would not require judges to grant release.

The Supreme Court also declined this week to revive a Biden-era policy that allowed immigration judges to pause deportation proceedings for immigrants seeking humanitarian visas or other legal status.