Reported / Citable
Background
Cristian Vasquez Alvarez, a Mexican national, entered the United States without inspection in 2013 and has resided here continuously since. On May 7, 2026, ICE arrested and detained him at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas without affording him a bond hearing. He filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, asserting that his detention violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his constitutional right to procedural due process.
The government contended that Vasquez Alvarez, having never been formally admitted or paroled, is an “applicant for admission” subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A), with release available only through DHS’s parole authority — not through a bond hearing. This position reflected ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons’s July 2025 internal memorandum reversing nearly three decades of agency practice, subsequently adopted as binding precedent by the Board of Immigration Appeals in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025).
In February 2026, the Fifth Circuit in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi foreclosed statutory challenges to that interpretation of Section 1225, but expressly did not reach due process claims, remanding the case for further proceedings. Multiple district courts within the circuit subsequently held that Buenrostro-Mendez left constitutional challenges intact.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition and ordered ICE to release Vasquez Alvarez by June 5, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his detention, with counsel notified at least two hours in advance. The court held that detaining a noncitizen who has lived in the interior of the United States since 2013 — without any individualized assessment of flight risk or danger to the community — violates procedural due process under the Fifth Amendment, as analyzed under the Mathews v. Eldridge framework.
The court rejected the government’s argument that Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” stripped Vasquez Alvarez of due process rights, distinguishing that case on two grounds: (1) Vasquez Alvarez challenges his detention, not his admission or removal proceedings; and (2) unlike the petitioner in Thuraissigiam, who was apprehended within twenty-five yards of the border and never released, Vasquez Alvarez established substantial connections with the United States over thirteen years of continuous presence in the interior. The court relied on Zadvydas v. Davis and Wong Wing v. United States for the proposition that the Due Process Clause applies to all persons within U.S. territory, regardless of immigration status.
The court explicitly departed from its own prior holdings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, which had applied the entry fiction to noncitizens with substantial interior presence, finding that a growing district-court consensus and further analysis of the applicable law compelled a different result. Statutory challenges foreclosed by Buenrostro-Mendez were dismissed, and the court declined to reach Vasquez Alvarez’s APA claims.
Key Takeaways
- A noncitizen who entered without inspection but has lived continuously in the U.S. interior for over a decade has established “substantial connections” sufficient to trigger Fifth Amendment procedural due process protections against detention without an individualized bond hearing.
- Thuraissigiam‘s entry fiction limits process in removal and admissibility proceedings but does not eliminate due process rights in detention challenges brought by noncitizens with substantial interior presence — the court draws a firm line between challenges to admission and challenges to physical confinement.
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision forecloses only statutory challenges to the government’s Section 1225 detention authority; it leaves constitutional due process claims fully open, as confirmed by the government’s own concession at oral argument that no due process issue was before that court.
- The court’s order requires that if Vasquez Alvarez is re-detained, he must be afforded a bond hearing, and respondents must file a status report confirming release by June 8, 2026.
Why It Matters
This decision joins a substantial and growing body of district court authority within the Fifth Circuit holding that the Trump administration’s 2025 policy shift — classifying long-resident undocumented immigrants as “applicants for admission” ineligible for bond hearings — cannot be applied to people who have developed substantial ties to the United States, without violating the Constitution. By explicitly overruling its own prior contrary decisions, the court signals a meaningful doctrinal recalibration: years of continuous presence in the U.S. interior confer constitutional protections that the government’s “entry fiction” theory cannot extinguish.
For practitioners, the ruling clarifies that habeas petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 remain a viable vehicle for challenging Section 1225 detention on due process grounds even after Buenrostro-Mendez, that exhaustion of administrative remedies is likely only a prudential (not jurisdictional) requirement in this context, and that the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test — rather than the entry fiction — governs the process owed to detained noncitizens with substantial U.S. presence. The ultimate constitutional question, expressly reserved by the Supreme Court in Jennings v. Rodriguez and Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez, appears headed for appellate resolution.