No-bond immigrant policy echoed in Tacoma before nationwide rollout

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Four Washington immigration judges in Tacoma began denying bond to many immigrants held on immigration charges years before a wider shift in U.S. immigration enforcement that later echoed their reasoning, an Associated Press review found. The judges’ practice, carried out at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, became a focal point after the Trump administration adopted a similar “no-bond” interpretation and moved to expand detention capacity. In May 2026, a federal appeals court knocked down the administration’s policy, a setback that came after other appeals courts had already agreed with the government’s approach in separate cases, setting up a likely Supreme Court fight.

AP described how the Tacoma judges’ bond decisions triggered far-reaching legal fallout. The denial of bond for many detainees “has unleashed tens of thousands of lawsuits since July,” the report said, with detainees alleging violations of constitutional rights tied to confinement without the opportunity to seek release on bond.

Neil Floyd, the only one of the four Tacoma judges who agreed to speak with AP, said clerks researched the issue for about six months before the judges concluded they could not grant bond. Floyd described the decision as a collective one and said it was shaped by the judges’ reading of the statutes governing immigration detention—specifically, that the relevant law required detention for people categorized as “applicants for admission” rather than allowing bond hearings under a different statute used for people lawfully present for longer periods.

Floyd tied the judges’ legal conclusion to fairness based on how the law treats entry and asylum at ports of entry. He said that if someone “enter[s] the United States the right way, by coming and knocking on the door to ask for asylum at a port of entry, the law is 100% clear,” and that under that framework “you are detained until we decide whether or not we’re going to let you in.” He also said the judges reached their interpretation together because it was too big a decision for a single judge to step out on alone.

The Tacoma judges were not known as radical outliers, AP reported. It said all four—Theresa Scala, who was chief Tacoma judge at the time, along with John Odell, Tammy Fitting, and Floyd—started their careers as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyers, and AP reported that each had granted asylum at rates slightly higher than the national average.

Immigration attorneys in Tacoma said they were surprised by the judges’ stance. Matt Adams, an attorney for Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said the practice looked like “a pretty blatantly prosecutorial push to keep people locked up,” and he said his organization sued over the practice. AP reported that the lawsuit was filed in March 2025 and alleged the Tacoma judges ignored decades of precedent; the case had not yet been scheduled for trial, according to the report.

AP also described how the Trump administration later adopted the judges’ theory at a national scale. In July, ICE announced a change that the report said mirrored the Tacoma judges’ view: immigrants who had been in the U.S. for years but did not enter legally would be treated as “applicants for admission” and therefore subject to mandatory detention. AP said the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals agreed with ICE’s arguments in September.

As the policy spread, the report said the pace of litigation accelerated alongside a rapid increase in detention. AP reported that the number of people in ICE custody roughly doubled last year, peaking at about 75,000 in January, and that ICE planned to spend $38.3 billion to increase detention to 92,300 beds by the end of November, largely by opening “megacenters” that can house up to 10,000 people each. The report said judges argued that major ICE raids compounded the strain, and it said the administration’s stance left many detainees facing mandatory detention when arrested.

Despite the administration’s “no-bond” approach, AP reported that some immigrants have succeeded in court. Some federal judges ordered immediate release, while others sent cases back to immigration court for bond hearings. The report included an account of Victor Cruz, a handyman in Portland, Oregon, who AP said spent 24 days in Tacoma after ICE agents arrested him without a warrant; an immigration judge granted him a bond hearing and he was released in October, AP said, adding that he later won his immigration case in February.

On the day of AP’s reporting in Tacoma, AP said Fitting—one of the original four judges—held bond hearings under orders from a federal judge. AP reported that she denied bond for an Oregon dishwasher with a 2002 drunken-driving conviction but granted $14,000 bond to another immigrant with no criminal record, while saying the person’s pathway to legal status was “tenuous.”

AP said the Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment through the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which operates more than 70 immigration courts nationwide. With appeals courts knocking down the administration’s policy this month after other appeals courts had sided with it, AP reported that the dispute is likely headed to the Supreme Court—an outcome that would determine whether the “applicants for admission” interpretation can be used to limit or eliminate bond hearings for many long-term residents in ICE custody.