Days after a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld the Trump administration's authority to systematically detain illegal immigrants targeted for deportation, federal district judges in Texas found what they believe is a loophole — and they're driving straight through it.

El Paso-based Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled late Monday in at least five cases that the appellate decision did not prevent her from ordering the release of detained illegal immigrants on constitutional grounds. Her argument: procedural due process claims remain a separate legal track, the 5th Circuit never closed.

"This conclusion is not changed by the Fifth Circuit's recent decision."

Politico reported that Cardone, a George W. Bush appointee, went further, ruling that the circuit's decision "has no bearing on this Court's determination of whether [the petitioner] is being detained in violation of his constitutional right to procedural due process."

She wasn't alone. Fellow El Paso judge David Briones, a Clinton appointee, reached the same conclusion. And outside the 5th Circuit's jurisdiction, Biden-appointed judges in Colorado and New Jersey openly rejected the appellate court's reasoning altogether.

The pattern is unmistakable: a segment of the federal judiciary is maneuvering around a clear appellate ruling to keep releasing detained illegal immigrants — and doing so within days of the decision landing.

What the 5th Circuit Actually Said

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit ruled 2-1 in favor of the administration's interpretation of its power to detain people slated for deportation. The decision was a significant win, blessing the government's approach at a time when detained illegal immigrants have been filing habeas petitions in extraordinary numbers across Texas and Louisiana.

These petitions have become the primary legal weapon against the administration's enforcement posture. The 5th Circuit ruling should have slowed that tide. Instead, district judges immediately began carving exceptions.

Cardone's move is particularly instructive. Rather than challenge the 5th Circuit's statutory interpretation head-on, she pivoted to constitutional due process — a claim the appellate panel apparently did not foreclose in explicit terms. It's a technical distinction that produces a very practical result: illegal immigrants ordered released despite the higher court's green light for detention.

The Judicial Resistance Spreads

Briones reiterated his original holding in plain terms:

"The Court reiterates its original holding that noncitizens who have 'established connections' in the United States by virtue of living in the country for a substantial period acquire a liberty interest in being free from government detention without due process of law."

Outside the 5th Circuit, the tone was less careful and more combative. Judge Charlotte Sweeney, a Biden appointee in Colorado, delivered a detailed rejection of the ruling, accusing the two-judge majority of paying "lip service" to crucial legal principles and attempting to mask the decision's "infirmity" with clunky analogies. Judge Evelyn Padin, a Biden appointee in New Jersey, said she was "unpersuaded" by the opinion and argued it would render other aspects of immigration law meaningless.

Neither Sweeney nor Padin is bound by the 5th Circuit. Their rulings carry weight only in their own jurisdictions. But the rhetorical hostility signals where parts of the judiciary intend to draw the line — and it is nowhere near where the 5th Circuit placed it.

A Trump appointee takes a different path

Not every district judge rushed to defy the appellate court. Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a Trump appointee based in Brownsville, peppered attorneys in a long series of cases for their views on the 5th Circuit's ruling and whether his pending petitions should be dismissed. His approach has been described as cautious — a sharp contrast to the speed with which Cardone and Briones moved to insulate their prior rulings from appellate review.

Rodriguez's deliberation is what judicial restraint actually looks like. You receive a ruling from a higher court, you assess its implications, and you proceed carefully. What Cardone and the Biden appointees did was find the nearest exit.

The Bigger Game

The administration has been transferring detained illegal immigrants to Texas from other states, including Minnesota, concentrating cases within the 5th Circuit's jurisdiction. The strategy is sound: consolidate enforcement litigation in a circuit more likely to uphold executive authority. The 5th Circuit validated that bet on Friday.

But district judges sit below the appellate court, and they process individual cases. If enough of them adopt Cardone's due process framework, the 5th Circuit's ruling becomes a ceiling that nobody touches — technically intact, practically irrelevant. Every habeas petition reframed as a due process claim slides underneath it.

This is how legal resistance works in practice. You don't overturn the ruling. You reclassify the claim.

The losing parties from Friday's decision may still appeal to the full 5th Circuit or the Supreme Court. That path remains open, and it may ultimately be necessary — not because the panel's reasoning was wrong, but because the district courts have already demonstrated they will interpret any ambiguity as an invitation to keep doing what they were doing before.

Spokespeople for the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

What This Reveals

The left has spent years insisting that "no one is above the law." They trot out the phrase for every enforcement action, every subpoena fight, every congressional referral. But when a federal appellate court issues a ruling that supports immigration enforcement, the response from district judges isn't compliance — it's creative lawyering to reach the opposite result.

The principle was never about the law. It was about which outcomes the law should be made to produce.

Cardone is a Bush appointee, which complicates the narrative that this is purely partisan. But the legal theory she's deploying — that illegal immigrants detained for deportation possess a liberty interest rooted in how long they've lived here — is one that, if accepted broadly, would make meaningful interior enforcement nearly impossible. The longer someone evades the law, the stronger their claim to remain. That's not due process. That's a reward for successful evasion.

The 5th Circuit spoke clearly. Within seventy-two hours, multiple judges found a way not to listen. If the administration wants this ruling to matter beyond the pages it's printed on, the next appeal can't wait.