A federal appeals court delivered a victory for the Trump administration on Friday night by backing its mass detention policy that locks up most people it intends to deport.

The three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas split on the ruling with two judges ruling that the Trump administration had the correct interpretation of the immigration law when it comes to the ability to detain people that will be deported, according to Politico. 

“That prior Administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority … does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” Judge Edith Jones, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, wrote for the majority.

The case centers on the interpretation of a statute that requires migrants who are still "applicants for admission” to be held without bond while seeking admission to the United States. 

The law was previously interpreted as new illegal migrants and not those who have been in the country illegally for years, but the Trump administration said in July that anyone targeted for deportation would be treated as an “applicant for admission," and therefore subject to detention.

Judge Dana Douglas, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, claimed in her dissent that the ruling would require as many as two million migrants residing in the United States to be detained without bond.

“Straining at a gnat, the majority swallows a camel,” she wrote. “The government’s proposed reading of the statute would mean that, for purposes of immigration detention, the border is now everywhere. That is not the law Congress passed, and if it had, it would have spoken much more clearly.”

Although the ruling is a victory for the Trump administration, the ruling could still be appealed to the Supreme Court after other courts signaled they disagreed with the interpretation.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.