Reported / Citable
Background
Oreste Israel Torres Hermida, a Cuban national, entered the United States in August 2022, was placed in full removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a, and was released into the country. On May 5, 2026, he was re-arrested and detained at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Karnes City, Texas—this time without any bond hearing. The government classified him as an “applicant for admission” under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(a)(1), making him subject, in the government’s view, to mandatory detention under § 1225(b)(2)(A) with no right to a bond hearing and release available only through DHS parole authority.
Torres Hermida filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus asserting that his detention violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his Fifth Amendment due process rights. The government’s position rested on a July 2025 internal ICE memorandum (the “Lyons Memo”) and a subsequent Board of Immigration Appeals decision, Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025), which together reversed nearly three decades of agency practice by holding that all noncitizens who entered without inspection are subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b) rather than discretionary detention under § 1226(a).
The Fifth Circuit had recently addressed the statutory question in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496, 2026 WL 323330 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026), foreclosing statutory challenges to the government’s reinterpretation of § 1225. However, the Fifth Circuit expressly did not reach due process arguments—a point the government conceded at oral argument in that case—and remanded for further proceedings rather than ordering dismissal.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the habeas petition on procedural due process grounds, ordering the government to release Torres Hermida by June 17, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his May 2026 detention, and requiring that he be afforded a bond hearing if re-detained. The court dismissed the statutory claims as foreclosed by Buenrostro-Mendez and declined to reach the petitioner’s APA claim for lack of jurisdiction, but held that the constitutional due process question remained open and squarely controlled the outcome.
The court rejected the government’s argument that DHS v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), stripped Torres Hermida of due process rights. Thuraissigiam’s “entry fiction”—treating certain noncitizens as if still standing at the border—applies to challenges to the admission process, not to challenges to physical detention. Torres Hermida did not seek to compel his admission or contest removal; he sought only the opportunity to apply for release on bond. Moreover, the court found that Thuraissigiam’s holding is geographically and temporally bounded: it applies to noncitizens at the threshold of initial entry, not to individuals like Torres Hermida who entered in 2022, were assessed and released by the government, and established substantial presence in the United States over several years.
Applying the three-part balancing test from Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court held that all three factors favor requiring an individualized bond hearing. The private interest—freedom from physical restraint—is foundational. The risk of erroneous deprivation is high where detention is automatic and categorical, without any individualized assessment of flight risk or dangerousness. And the government’s administrative burden in providing a bond hearing is minimal, particularly given that every noncitizen who had previously been released into the interior had already been found by the government itself to pose neither a security risk nor a flight risk. The court also expressly departed from its own prior rulings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, where it had previously applied the entry fiction to noncitizens with substantial presence.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision forecloses statutory challenges to the government’s reclassification of interior noncitizens as § 1225(b) mandatory detainees, but it does not foreclose—and did not reach—Fifth Amendment procedural due process challenges.
- Thuraissigiam’s “entry fiction” is limited to due process challenges concerning the admission process itself; noncitizens challenging physical detention, rather than seeking admission or relief from removal, retain procedural due process rights under the Fifth Amendment.
- A noncitizen who entered the United States, was released by the government into the interior, and established substantial presence here has sufficient constitutional ties to the territory to trigger Mathews v. Eldridge balancing—and all three Mathews factors support entitlement to an individualized bond hearing before continued detention.
- Courts have now consistently distinguished Thuraissigiam on both grounds—subject matter (detention vs. admission) and geography/time (interior presence vs. border threshold)—producing a growing district-court consensus that mandatory, no-hearing detention of long-present interior noncitizens violates procedural due process.
- The government’s argument that a bond hearing is “irrelevant” because § 1225(b) mandates detention regardless of flight risk or dangerousness was rejected as circular: once due process applies, the process owed is determined by the Constitution, not by the statute whose constitutionality is being challenged.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a rapidly growing body of federal district court rulings across the Fifth Circuit—and beyond—holding that the Biden-era practice of releasing interior noncitizens and the Trump administration’s 2025 reversal of that practice together create a constitutional floor: noncitizens who were assessed, released, and allowed to develop substantial ties to the United States cannot be re-detained indefinitely without any individualized hearing. Practitioners representing detained clients in the Western District of Texas—and in circuits without binding appellate authority on the due process question—can point to this decision’s thorough synthesis of Thuraissigiam, Zadvydas, Jennings v. Rodriguez, and Mathews v. Eldridge as a roadmap for obtaining bond hearings through § 2241 habeas petitions notwithstanding Buenrostro-Mendez.
The decision also carries significance because Judge Rodriguez expressly overruled his own prior holdings in two cases where he had rejected similar due process arguments, signaling that even judges who initially sided with the government on this question are reconsidering in light of the accumulating weight of authority. As the Fifth Circuit and, eventually, the Supreme Court confront the unresolved constitutional question that Jennings and Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez each declined to answer, decisions like this one will constitute the factual and doctrinal record on which those rulings will rest.