Main: Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a roundtable on criminal cartels with President Donald Trump in the State Dining Room of the White House, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, in Washington, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem listens (AP Photo/Evan Vucci). Inset: Judge Sunshine Sykes, pictured at a Senate Judiciary Hearing in 2022 (Forbes/YouTube).
A federal judge apparently had enough of the Trump administration's "frivolous arguments" and "indefinite detentions," so she sided with class action plaintiff noncitizens and repeatedly mocked the government in a lengthy order.
U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes, the first Native American federal judge in California after President Joe Biden appointed her to the bench in 2022, was abundantly clear from the start on Wednesday that the Trump administration's "extreme language" in press releases about deporting the "worst of the worst" is "an inaccurate description of most of those affected by DHS and ICE's operations."
Lazaro Maldonado Bautista's case is one of hundreds or more such examples, said Sykes of a man with "no criminal record" living and working in Los Angeles for "approximately four years" near U.S. citizen relatives but remaining in the country "without admission." Nonetheless, Bautista was arrested in June, held by ICE, and denied a bond hearing by the executive branch's immigration judges.
To carry out such mandatory indefinite detentions of "non-criminal noncitizens" with no chance at a bond hearing, the executive has insisted it can do so based on a "new" interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Sykes had already declared in December that the DHS policy was "not in accordance with law" and the class action plaintiffs were "entitled to consideration for release on bond by immigration officers[.]" Concerned about how "large" the number was of "people in Bautista's exact situation," the judge greenlit the class action case on a nationwide basis.
But the more that rulings went against DHS, Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE, Acting Director Todd Lyons, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in the case — up to and including the judge vacating the DHS policy backing "unlawful" indefinite detentions — the less it seemed to matter, Sykes said.
"On each occasion, and with each ruling being based on a more developed factual record than before, the Court determined the DHS Policy improperly interpreted the INA and that continued detention of Plaintiff Petitioners and those similarly situated was unlawful," Sykes said. "One might assume that four separate orders issued by a federal district court interpreting a federal statute would make clear that enforcing executive policies premised on a contrary legal interpretation is improper. Remarkably, that has not been the case."
"Somehow, even after the judicial declaration of law that the DHS was misguided in its act of legal interpretation that nullified portions of a congressionally enacted statute, Respondents still insist they can continue their campaign of illegal action," she added, calling that position "shameless."
The judge said that her court was left with "no other option but to uphold its constitutional duty," as the "threats posed by the executive branch cannot be viewed in isolation."
"Americans have expressed deep concerns over unlawful, wanton acts by the executive branch. It is not the 'worst of the worst' that are swept into the nationwide and reckless violations of the law by the executive branch," Sykes continued. "In the past weeks, the Government detained Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son without a valid warrant. Beyond its terror against noncitizens, the executive branch has extended its violence on its own citizens, killing two American citizens — Renée Good and Alex Pretti — in Minnesota."
Next, the judge cited the continued detention of plaintiffs as "ample evidence" of the government's "noncompliance" with her judgment, slammed "frivolous arguments that aim to insulate unlawful policies from judicial review," and refused to assume a posture of judicial "helplessness."
Sykes blasted the Trump administration for deploying a "deliberately dense three-step maneuver to reach their core absurd conclusion that no further relief is warranted."
Here is the Trump administration's tactic for lulling courts to sleep, according to the judge:
Step 1: Identify an immaterial difference between two things that are functionally the same.
Step 2: Insist that the immaterial difference is so consequential that it can violate separation of powers.
Finally, and most importantly,
Step 3: Make sure to never mention the Constitution with the hope that a federal court will not notice.
Sykes did notice — and in parting shots she scolded the Trump administration about the damage done.
"Respondents have already wasted valuable time and resources. Worst of all, not only does detention without due process deprive members of the Bond Eligible Class of their liberty, economic stability, and fundamental dignity, but it also harms their families, communities, and the fabric of this very nation," she wrote, vacating a Board of Immigration Appeals decision the government relied on to deny bond hearings and ordering that the plaintiffs be put on notice "classwide."
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