Ruling by Attorney General Barr means thousands more migrants may wait months in detention

Attorney General William Barr weighed in on an immigration case on Tuesday, establishing a new precedent that could affect thousands of migrants at the southwest border seeking asylum in the U.S.

In his decision, Barr said that asylum seekers who begin in expedited removal, in which they are not given the right to see a judge, and are then transferred to full removal proceedings, in which they wait to make their case before a judge, should not be released on bond. It means that thousands of asylum seekers who once would have been out on bond and living in the U.S. while awaiting a decision on their status will now be kept in detention centers, where the wait times are climbing from months to a year. "This ruling gives [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] the legal authority to detain all of these people indefinitely," said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration think tank. "That's if they have the capacity. So I think the actual effect of this ruling will be severely limited by ICE's capacity." Due to the limited capacity, Barr said his decision should go into effect in 90 days in order to give ICE time to build bed space...MORE