Mandatory detention is the newest and potentially most powerful weapon in the White House’s arsenal for turbo-charging deportations. Once arrested, immigrants without legal status will, with few exceptions, be held in custody until they are deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That means they are no longer eligible, as in the past, to post bond at a hearing and have an immigration judge decide their fate.

ICE alone will be the decider.

That threatens to transform temporary detention centers into long-term prisons — and to strip immigrants of the constitutional rights that are due to every person in the U.S., regardless of legal status.

Acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons wrote in a July memo obtained by the Washington Post that immigrants should be detained “for the duration o

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