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Trump's no-bond policy for immigrants in custody played out for years in Tacoma, Washington
The policy has triggered more than 40,000 lawsuits since July and could force mandatory detention for about 2 million immigrants.
Immigration judges at Tacoma's Northwest ICE Processing Center started denying bond early this decade after clerks researched the issue for about six months, with Judge Neil Floyd saying the four judges decided Congress never authorized them to grant bond.
The judges based their interpretation on a 1996 law stating that applicants for admission to the United States must be detained, though the law was long interpreted as affecting only people recently crossing the border without legal permission.
Judge Scala denied bond to an Oregon dishwasher with a 2002 drunken-driving conviction but granted $14,000 bond to another immigrant with no criminal record, while handyman Victor Cruz spent 24 days in the Tacoma detention center before receiving a bond hearing in October.
The Trump administration adopted the judges' legal theory last year, with ICE announcing in July that immigrants in the U.S. for years without legal entry are subject to mandatory detention, affecting some 2 million immigrants and triggering tens of thousands of lawsuits.
An appeals court this month knocked down the Trump administration's policy, setting up a likely Supreme Court showdown, while ICE plans to spend $38.3 billion to increase detention to 92,300 beds by November, largely through megacenters housing up to 10,000 people each.