Reported / Citable
Background
Alejandro Alonso Favela, a native and citizen of Mexico, entered the United States without inspection in September 2006 and resided continuously in the country for nearly two decades. On May 21, 2026, he was arrested and detained at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Karnes City, Texas, without being afforded a bond hearing. He filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus arguing that his detention violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his constitutional right to procedural due process.
At the center of the dispute is a policy shift initiated in July 2025 when ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memorandum abandoning the agency’s prior three-decade practice of treating noncitizens present in the interior without admission as subject to discretionary detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) — which entitles them to bond hearings. Under the new interpretation, codified by the Board of Immigration Appeals in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025), all such individuals are classified as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), with no bond hearing rights. In February 2026, the Fifth Circuit upheld the statutory basis of that interpretation in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026), but expressly did not reach any constitutional due process question.
Respondents argued that several INA jurisdiction-stripping provisions barred the court from hearing the petition and that Favela’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies was fatal to his claim. They also contended that DHS v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), and Buenrostro-Mendez together foreclosed any constitutional challenge to his detention.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition and ordered Favela released no later than June 17, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his detention. The court first confirmed its jurisdiction, reiterating that INA provisions stripping review of removal proceedings do not reach challenges to detention, and that 8 U.S.C. § 1226(e)’s bar on reviewing discretionary detention decisions does not apply to mandatory detention under § 1225(b). The court also excused exhaustion of administrative remedies because the BIA had already issued binding adverse precedent, making any administrative appeal futile.
On the merits, the court held that Buenrostro-Mendez foreclosed only statutory challenges; the Fifth Circuit expressly declined to address constitutional claims, and Government counsel conceded as much at oral argument. The court then applied the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test and held that detaining Favela — a man with nearly twenty years of continuous presence in the United States — without any individualized assessment of flight risk or danger to the community violated his Fifth Amendment right to procedural due process.
The court also distinguished Thuraissigiam on two grounds: first, Favela challenges his detention, not the admission process, so the “entry fiction” limiting due process rights in removal proceedings does not apply; and second, unlike the petitioner in Thuraissigiam who was apprehended twenty-five yards from the border and never released, Favela had lived in the United States for two decades and established substantial connections to the country, triggering the full protections of the Due Process Clause. The court explicitly departed from its own prior rulings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem in light of the growing district-court consensus on this point.
Key Takeaways
- Federal courts retain habeas jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 to hear constitutional challenges to immigration detention; INA provisions stripping jurisdiction over removal proceedings do not extend to detention challenges.
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision, which upheld the government’s reclassification of interior undocumented immigrants as § 1225(b) “applicants for admission,” did not resolve — and does not foreclose — constitutional due process challenges to bondless detention.
- Noncitizens with substantial, long-term presence in the United States are entitled to an individualized bond hearing assessing flight risk and dangerousness before being detained; the government’s novel interpretation of § 1225(b), applied without such a hearing, violates procedural due process under Mathews v. Eldridge.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” is limited to due process challenges involving the admission process and to aliens at or near the threshold of initial entry — it does not strip due process rights from noncitizens who have established substantial connections in the country’s interior.
- Where the BIA has issued binding adverse precedent on a petitioner’s statutory claim, exhaustion of administrative remedies is excused as futile; constitutional detention challenges also require no administrative exhaustion.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a rapidly expanding body of district court rulings pushing back against the Trump administration’s 2025 policy shift that eliminated bond hearings for the estimated millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States interior. By grounding relief in the Fifth Amendment rather than the INA — and by explicitly departing from its own prior rulings — Judge Rodriguez’s opinion signals that even courts that previously deferred to the government’s statutory position are reconsidering their approach under constitutional analysis. The opinion adds to a growing circuit-wide consensus that Buenrostro-Mendez did not end the litigation and that the due process question remains open and alive in every district.
For practitioners, the ruling offers a clear template: statutory challenges are foreclosed in the Fifth Circuit, but procedural due process claims under Mathews v. Eldridge remain viable for interior detainees with substantial US presence, and administrative exhaustion need not be satisfied where the BIA’s own precedent forecloses relief. The unresolved constitutional question — whether any statute can authorize indefinite civil detention of long-resident noncitizens without individualized process — is now percolating through multiple district courts and will almost certainly require eventual resolution by the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court.