The Trump administration’s 6-2 losing record in appeals courts over its mandatory immigration detention policy looks like an overwhelming streak of losses. However, a closer examination of the judges behind those decisions suggests the policy may be less legally doomed than the scoreboard implies.Several of the legal defeats against the revised Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention policy were handed down by three-judge judicial panels containing two Democrat-appointed judges, while both of its victories were delivered by Republican-appointed majorities. Although judicial ideology does not explain every outcome, the pattern shows how randomly assigned three-judge panels can make an unsettled legal question appear more one-sided than it may ultimately prove before the Supreme Court.More than 460 federal judges have rejected the Trump administration’s interpretation in over 10,000 cases, compared with roughly 54 judges who have endorsed it in approximately 1,100 cases. But that volume does not represent 10,000 independent interpretations of the law. Many cases present the same question repeatedly, and district judges within a circuit often follow an emerging consensus until an appellate court supplies binding guidance.