Reported / Citable
Background
Ornes Wutset Arias Flores, a Honduran citizen, entered the United States in approximately June 2012 and had lived here for roughly fourteen years before his detention. He was first encountered by immigration authorities in May 2023, served with a Notice to Appear charging him with being present without admission or parole, and then released on recognizance that same day. On April 16, 2026, immigration authorities re-arrested him following his release from Travis County Jail, where he had been held on a controlled substance charge that the prosecutor subsequently declined to pursue.
Respondents — including Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons, and local detention officials — asserted that Arias Flores was subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2) as an “applicant for admission,” a classification the government has applied to long-resident noncitizens who entered without inspection. Under that interpretation, confirmed by the Fifth Circuit’s recent statutory ruling in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, 166 F.4th 494 (5th Cir. 2026), no bond hearing before an immigration judge was available. Arias Flores remained detained at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, Texas, with removal proceedings ongoing and a hearing scheduled for June 17, 2026.
Arias Flores filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 on May 26, 2026, arguing that his indefinite detention without any individualized assessment of flight risk or dangerousness violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Judge Robert Pitman ordered Respondents to show cause within three days; they opposed the petition on June 3, 2026.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Pitman granted the petition in full, holding that Arias Flores’s detention without a bond hearing violated his Fifth Amendment right to procedural due process. The court first dispatched the exhaustion argument: because Respondents themselves maintained that § 1225(b)(2) mandates detention with no avenue for bond relief — a position formalized in Matter of Yajure Hurtado — any administrative exhaustion requirement would be futile. The court then addressed the merits, acknowledging that the Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision resolved the statutory question against petitioners like Arias Flores but expressly left the constitutional question open. Bound by that ruling on the statute, the court turned exclusively to the Due Process Clause.
Applying the three-factor balancing test of Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court found all three factors favored Arias Flores. His approximately fourteen years of continuous presence in the United States created a substantial liberty interest. The complete absence of any individualized hearing created a high risk of erroneous deprivation. And the government’s interest in ensuring appearance and community safety — though legitimate — would be fully addressed at a bond hearing, particularly given that bond hearings under § 1225(b) had been routinely conducted for decades before the government’s recent reinterpretation of the statute. The court further rejected Respondents’ reliance on DHS v. Thuraissigiam, distinguishing that case on the grounds that Arias Flores had effected a long-standing entry into the country and was not challenging the admission process, only seeking a chance to contest his detention.
Finding a constitutional violation, the court ordered Arias Flores’s immediate release from the T. Don Hutto Detention Center. It enjoined Respondents from re-detaining him without first conducting a bond hearing — with notice to counsel, a date agreed upon by both parties, and the burden on Respondents to justify detention by clear and convincing evidence of dangerousness or flight risk. Respondents were also required to release him under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his April 2026 arrest and to file a compliance status report by June 8, 2026.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s statutory ruling in Buenrostro-Mendez — holding that § 1225(b)(2) applies to long-resident noncitizens who entered without inspection — does not resolve, and explicitly did not address, the independent constitutional question of whether such detention without a bond hearing violates the Fifth Amendment.
- Noncitizens who have resided in the United States for an extended period possess a cognizable liberty interest under the Due Process Clause that is meaningfully distinct from the interest of someone apprehended at or near the border; Thuraissigiam does not foreclose their due process claims.
- All three Mathews v. Eldridge factors favor a detained long-resident noncitizen: a strong liberty interest, high risk of erroneous deprivation absent any hearing, and a government interest adequately served by the bond hearing process itself.
- When ordering release as the habeas remedy, the court imposed a clear-and-convincing-evidence burden on the government at any future bond hearing — a higher standard than the typical preponderance used in many immigration bond proceedings.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a growing body of district court rulings across Texas — and the country — holding that the government’s post-Buenrostro-Mendez mandatory-detention policy runs into an independent constitutional barrier. By grounding relief solely in the Due Process Clause rather than statutory interpretation, these courts have found a path to habeas relief that the Fifth Circuit’s ruling did not close. Practitioners litigating § 1225(b)(2) detention cases in the Fifth Circuit now have a clear roadmap: concede the statutory question where Buenrostro-Mendez controls, and press the as-applied Mathews claim instead.
The decision also has practical significance for the government’s enforcement posture. The court’s observation that bond hearings under § 1225(b) were conducted routinely for decades undercuts any administrative-burden argument against reinstituting them. And the injunction’s requirement of clear and convincing evidence of danger or flight risk before re-detention raises the stakes considerably for ICE in any subsequent bond proceeding involving this petitioner — and potentially signals the standard courts in this district will apply going forward.