Reported / Citable
Background
Oriagnis Yeraldin Anez Riera, a Venezuelan national, entered the United States in October 2024, was placed in full removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a, and was released into the country. On January 18, 2026, she was re-arrested and detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dilley, Texas — without any bond hearing.
The government justified her detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), which mandates detention of “applicants for admission.” This position followed a July 2025 internal ICE memorandum by Acting Director Todd Lyons, which reinterpreted the INA to classify all noncitizens present in the United States without formal admission or parole as applicants for admission subject to mandatory detention without bond. The Board of Immigration Appeals formalized this stance 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 detention framework, though it expressly declined to reach constitutional due process arguments.
Petitioner filed a habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, asserting that her detention without any individualized assessment of flight risk or dangerousness violated the INA and her Fifth Amendment procedural due process rights. The court dismissed her statutory claims as foreclosed by Buenrostro-Mendez but proceeded to resolve her constitutional claim on the merits.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition and ordered petitioner’s release by June 3, 2026. The court held that detaining Anez Riera — a noncitizen with substantial presence in the United States who had been previously released into the interior — without any individualized bond hearing violated her procedural due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. Applying the three-factor balancing test from Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court found that all three factors weighed in favor of requiring an individualized bond determination before continued detention: the profound liberty interest at stake, the high risk of erroneous deprivation absent any individualized hearing, and the government’s limited administrative burden in providing one.
The court rejected the government’s reliance on the “entry fiction” from Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), on two grounds. First, Anez Riera challenged only her detention, not her admission or removal proceedings — a distinction Thuraissigiam did not address. Second, unlike the petitioner in Thuraissigiam, who was apprehended twenty-five yards inside the border and never released, Anez Riera had entered the country months earlier, been paroled or released into the interior, and established a substantial presence in the United States. Under Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), and Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (1896), once a noncitizen enters U.S. territory, the Due Process Clause applies to all persons within that territory.
Notably, Judge Rodriguez explicitly departed from his own prior rulings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem — in which he had applied the entry fiction to the detention of noncitizens with substantial U.S. presence — citing a growing consensus among district courts that Thuraissigiam‘s limitation is confined to aliens at the threshold of initial entry.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision forecloses statutory challenges to ICE’s 2025 reclassification of interior-dwelling undocumented noncitizens as applicants for admission, but leaves constitutional due process challenges fully intact.
- Noncitizens who entered the United States, were released or paroled into the interior, and established substantial presence retain a Fifth Amendment procedural due process right to an individualized bond hearing before continued detention — regardless of how ICE categorizes them under § 1225(b).
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” is limited to challenges concerning the admission process; it does not eliminate due process protections against prolonged detention for those who have moved beyond the threshold of initial entry.
- Judge Rodriguez’s explicit reversal of his own prior holdings signals that district courts are actively reconsidering earlier rulings that accepted broader application of the entry fiction to detention challenges.
Why It Matters
This decision is one of a growing line of Western District of Texas rulings — and district court decisions across the Fifth Circuit — holding that the Biden-to-Trump administration’s 2025 policy shift on immigration detention cannot, consistent with the Constitution, strip noncitizens with substantial U.S. ties of any right to an individualized bond hearing. The constitutional question left open by Buenrostro-Mendez is now being resolved in detainees’ favor at the district court level, creating significant pressure for the Fifth Circuit to address the due process issue on the merits.
For practitioners, the decision reinforces that habeas corpus remains a viable avenue to challenge immigration detention on procedural due process grounds even where statutory avenues are foreclosed, and that the key factual predicate — substantial U.S. presence prior to re-detention — distinguishes clients from the border-apprehension scenario in Thuraissigiam. Courts are increasingly treating prior government release into the interior, and any meaningful period of presence in the country, as sufficient to trigger Mathews v. Eldridge balancing.