Two Federal Judges Order ICE to Release Immigration Detainees on First Amendment Grounds. The Criminal Records Are Complicated.

Since the administration launched its enforcement surge in May 2025, federal courts have periodically stepped in to slow specific deportations. Two rulings this week added new friction to that pattern.

The Indiana Case

U.S. District Judge James Hanlon, a Trump appointee to the Southern District of Indiana, ordered ICE to release Salah Salem Sarsour on Thursday. Sarsour is a Palestinian green card-holder who has lived in the United States for 33 years, according to Breitbart News, which covered the ruling in detail.

The government's case against Sarsour rests on two Israeli criminal convictions: throwing a Molotov cocktail at homes of Israeli Armed Forces members in 1989, and attempting to possess weapons and ammunition in 1995. DHS argued he lied on immigration paperwork to conceal that history.

Judge Hanlon was direct in his order. He wrote that U.S. federal officials have known about Sarsour's convictions for at least 25 years. The Immigration and Naturalization Service evaluated them in 2000, 2008, 2010, and 2019 when considering his naturalization applications. The INS actually approved his naturalization in 2002, though Sarsour never completed the process. Hanlon found Sarsour's speech protected by the First Amendment and ruled the government could not detain him based on conduct it had declined to act on across five separate administrations.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations celebrated the ruling. CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad called it "a welcome and long-overdue step toward justice" and accused ICE of "targeting Muslim, Palestinian, and other community members for detention and intimidation."

A separate case covered by Fox News involved a Wisconsin mosque president also ordered released by a federal judge over what the court described as a "substantial" free speech claim after he criticized Israel. That case's procedural details were not fully available in the sources reviewed.

The Strongest Counterargument

The government's concern deserves direct statement because it is not frivolous. Throwing a Molotov cocktail at residences is not a speech act. It is an act of arson directed at people. The administration's position is that Sarsour concealed violent convictions on federal immigration forms, which is its own separate offense, and that prior administrations' failure to act does not bind the current one. That argument has real legal weight, and the fact that five administrations let it slide arguably reflects bureaucratic inertia as much as deliberate policy. The government has a legitimate interest in applying immigration law consistently, regardless of how long an applicant has been present.

Hanlon's ruling does not say the government's facts are wrong. It says the government's timing and its claimed basis, speech and advocacy, run into First Amendment problems. Whether the Molotov conviction alone, stripped of any speech element, could support deportation is a question the ruling leaves open.

What the Enforcement Numbers Actually Show

These two court orders land against a backdrop of enforcement data that the administration is using aggressively.

CBP provided statistics to Breitbart Texas showing southwest border apprehensions in May totaled 9,998. That represents a 94 percent decline from the monthly average under the Biden administration and a 96 percent decline below peak Biden-era months. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed the agency has now recorded 13 consecutive months of zero releases at the border, meaning no apprehended crossers have been released into the interior to pursue asylum since the Trump enforcement posture took hold.

ICE-Houston's May numbers are stark. Acting Field Office Director Gabriel Martinez told Breitbart that 735 criminal aliens arrested in the Houston area last month carried more than 1,711 combined criminal convictions. Seventy percent involved violent crimes or public safety threats: 5 homicides, 38 sex offenses (including 13 against children), 12 sex trafficking convictions, 224 assault and battery convictions, and 495 DWI convictions. Martinez said explicitly these numbers are not an anomaly. They represent a typical month.

Also in the sources: 21-year-old Maberic Javier Reyes, an illegal alien who crossed as a minor in 2022 and was released into the U.S. interior under the Biden administration, was charged this week with murdering his roommate with a machete in DeSoto County, Mississippi. ICE has lodged a detainer. DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said Reyes "would never have been in our country" under different border policies. That characterization is accurate as stated. He entered and was released under Biden-era procedures. It does not, however, speak to what post-entry supervision, if any, was possible or attempted.

Alligator Alcatraz: Still Empty

ICE confirmed it moved all detainees out of the Everglades tent detention facility ahead of hurricane season. As of June 19, DHS has not answered follow-up questions from Reason about whether the camp will reopen after hurricane season ends. Reason's reporting also noted that the facility opened last July during hurricane season with a Trump tour and custom merchandise, which makes the hurricane justification for closing it harder to take at face value. Governor Ron DeSantis said the camp was always temporary and may have "served its purpose" given expanded federal-state enforcement cooperation.

The Unresolved Question

The Sarsour ruling by a Trump-appointed judge raises a concrete legal issue the administration now has to answer. If a federal court finds that ICE targeted someone based substantially on protected speech and advocacy, does the government appeal, pursue deportation on the narrower criminal-record grounds alone, or move on? The case is Sarsour v. Swearingen et al, No. 2:26-cv-00224 (S.D. Ind.). No government appeal had been announced as of the time these sources were published.