The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to let federal authorities hold illegal aliens arrested in the U.S. interior without bail hearings, urging the justices to reverse a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that blocked a central part of the administration's detention policy.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed the petition this week, telling the justices the case raises a "critically important question of immigration law," driving thousands of detainee lawsuits nationwide.

The filing seeks review of a May 11 ruling by a 2-1 panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th  Circuit in Lopez-Campos v. Raycraft, which held that people living in the United States after entering illegally and picked up in the U.S. interior are not "applicants for admission" and subject to mandatory detention under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

At issue is a July 2025 Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo, signed by then-acting Director Todd M. Lyons, that reclassified every undocumented immigrant as an "applicant for admission" and stripped immigration judges of authority to hold bail hearings for that population.

The Board of Immigration Appeals adopted the same interpretation in a September 2025 decision, and immigration judges across the country began ordering detention without release.

The 6th Circuit, writing through Judge Eric Clay and joined by Judge R. Guy Cole, rejected that reading.

The court ruled that the petitioners — natives of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who had lived in the U.S. for years before being arrested by ICE or Customs and Border Protection — could not be detained under the no-bail statute and that holding them without an individualized hearing violated the Fifth Amendment's due process clause.

Judge Eric Murphy dissented.

"Detaining aliens who are living in the country after an illegal entry while their removal proceedings unfold prevents those aliens from evading hearings and helps ensure their removal from the United States," Sauer wrote in the petition.

He said the conflicting appellate rulings warrant Supreme Court review. The 5th and 8th circuits have endorsed the administration's reading, while the 2nd, 6th, and 11th circuits have rejected it.

Politico, citing the filing, reported that more than 9,300 lower-court rulings have gone against the policy.

The stakes are concrete.

ICE held roughly 73,000 people in custody as of this past January, a record, and the no-bail policy underpins that detention system.

A ruling for the administration would allow the practice to continue nationwide.

A ruling against it would force bail hearings for tens of thousands of detainees and likely accelerate releases.

The filing landed one day before the high court handed the administration twin immigration wins, including its 6-3 decision allowing the rollback of temporary protected status for Haitians and Syrians.

Reuters contributed to this report.