Reported / Citable
Background
Jose Rafael Urdaneta Medina, a Venezuelan national, entered the United States in December 2022, was detained, placed in full removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a, and then released into the country. On May 13, 2026, he was re-arrested and held without a bond hearing at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas. The government classified him as an “applicant for admission” under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(a)(1) and argued he was subject to mandatory detention without any bond hearing under Section 1225(b)—a position adopted agencywide by the “Lyons Memo” in July 2025 and codified by the Board of Immigration Appeals in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025).
Petitioner filed a pro se habeas corpus petition challenging his detention as a violation of both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his Fifth Amendment due process rights. The Fifth Circuit had recently foreclosed statutory challenges to the government’s reinterpretation of Section 1225 in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026), but that decision expressly left the constitutional due process question unresolved and remanded for further proceedings.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the habeas petition on procedural due process grounds and ordered ICE to release Petitioner by June 3, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those previously in place. The court dismissed the statutory claims as foreclosed by Buenrostro-Mendez but held that decision did not resolve—and the government had conceded at oral argument it did not present—a constitutional due process claim. Applying the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, the court found that detaining a noncitizen with substantial U.S. presence, without any individualized assessment of flight risk or danger to the community, violates the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee.
The court distinguished Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), on two grounds. First, Petitioner does not challenge the admission process; he seeks only an opportunity to apply for release from detention—a question Thuraissigiam did not address. Second, unlike the petitioner in Thuraissigiam who was apprehended twenty-five yards inside the border and never released, Urdaneta Medina entered in December 2022, was previously released by the government into the interior, and established substantial connections in the United States. The court held that for such individuals, Zadvydas v. Davis‘s principle—that the Due Process Clause protects all persons within U.S. territory—takes precedence over the “entry fiction” applicable to removal proceedings. The court also expressly departed from its own prior holdings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, which had applied the entry fiction to detention of noncitizens with substantial U.S. presence.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision foreclosed only statutory challenges to mandatory detention under Section 1225; it did not resolve—and the government conceded at argument it had not presented—constitutional due process claims, leaving that question for district courts in the first instance.
- Noncitizens who have entered the United States and established a substantial presence (including those previously paroled or released into the interior) possess Fifth Amendment procedural due process rights that require an individualized bond hearing before continued civil detention, regardless of the government’s classification of them as “applicants for admission.”
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” is limited to challenges to admissibility and removal proceedings for aliens at the threshold of entry; it does not strip due process rights from those challenging the conditions and fact of their detention after developing substantial ties to the United States.
- Every noncitizen previously paroled or released by the government was already found to pose neither a security risk nor a flight risk—the same individualized findings the court now holds due process requires before re-detention.
Why It Matters
This decision joins a growing body of Western District of Texas rulings holding that the Biden-to-Trump-era policy shift—reclassifying interior immigrants as “applicants for admission” to eliminate bond hearings—violates the Constitution as applied to individuals with substantial U.S. presence. By expressly reversing its own earlier precedents and aligning with the emerging district-court consensus, the court amplifies pressure on the Fifth Circuit (and ultimately the Supreme Court) to resolve the open constitutional question that Buenrostro-Mendez and Jennings v. Rodriguez have repeatedly declined to reach.
For practitioners, the ruling confirms a viable litigation path for similarly situated detainees: statutory arguments may be foreclosed in the Fifth Circuit, but as-applied procedural due process claims remain live. Attorneys representing immigrants detained under the novel Section 1225 interpretation—particularly those with lengthy U.S. residence who were previously released—should assess whether habeas petitions raising the Mathews v. Eldridge factors can secure bond hearings that are now being withheld as a matter of executive policy.