Overview
- By a 2–1 vote, the appeals court blocked a district judge’s blanket order freeing hundreds detained in Operation Midway Blitz, requiring case-by-case determinations instead.
- The court sustained the extension of the 2022 Castañon Nava consent decree into February after finding substantial noncompliance by immigration authorities across six Midwestern states.
- Judges rejected the administration’s broad mandatory-detention theory for people who entered without inspection, marking the first appellate court to rebuff that interpretation.
- The opinion noted the potential release pool has narrowed to about 442 from as many as 615, with any releases contingent on findings that arrests violated the decree and that individuals do not pose a danger.
- The panel stayed its own decree-extension ruling for roughly two weeks to allow a Supreme Court bid, and Judge Thomas Kirsch II dissented, arguing the district court overreached on enforcement discretion.