Reported / Citable
Background
Roubens Charles, a Haitian national, entered the United States in October 2022, was placed in removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a, and was released into the country after an individualized assessment found he posed neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. Nearly three and a half years later, on March 19, 2026, he was arrested and detained at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas — this time without any bond hearing.
The re-detention reflected a sweeping policy shift by the current administration. In July 2025, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memorandum announcing that the agency had “revisited its legal position” and concluded that all noncitizens who entered the United States without inspection are “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), rather than discretionary detention under § 1226(a). The Board of Immigration Appeals codified this position in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025). Under the new framework, release is available only through DHS’s discretionary parole authority — not through a bond hearing before an immigration judge.
Charles filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus asserting that his continued detention without any individualized hearing violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his Fifth Amendment right to procedural due process. In February 2026, the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi foreclosed statutory challenges to the government’s § 1225(b) interpretation, but the appellate court expressly did not reach the constitutional due process question, remanding for further proceedings. Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition on due process grounds alone.
The Court’s Holding
The court held that detaining Charles — a noncitizen who entered the United States in 2022, was released by immigration authorities, and had established substantial presence in the country — without any individualized assessment of flight risk or dangerousness violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of procedural due process. Applying the three-part balancing test of Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court found that all three factors weigh in favor of requiring a bond hearing: the private liberty interest in freedom from physical restraint is paramount; the risk of erroneous deprivation is high when detention is imposed categorically with no individualized review; and the administrative burden of conducting bond hearings is modest compared to that risk.
The court rejected the government’s reliance on Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), which held that noncitizens “at the threshold of initial entry” have only those admission rights Congress provides by statute. The court drew two key distinctions: first, Charles does not challenge the admission process at all — he seeks only a chance to apply for release from civil detention, a separate question Thuraissigiam never addressed; second, unlike the petitioner in Thuraissigiam, who was apprehended twenty-five yards from the border and never released, Charles had lived in the United States interior for years following a government-authorized release. Under Zadvydas v. Davis and Wong Wing v. United States, due process protections attach to “all persons within the territory of the United States,” and that protection deepens as a noncitizen develops substantial connections with the country.
The court also rejected the government’s argument that Buenrostro-Mendez disposed of Charles’s constitutional claims. During oral argument in that case, government counsel explicitly conceded that the only issue before the Fifth Circuit was the statutory question; the constitutional due process claim was never briefed or decided. The court further departed from its own prior rulings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, acknowledging that a growing consensus of district courts — and further consideration of controlling authority — warranted a change of course. Respondents were ordered to release Charles no later than June 3, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his re-detention, and to file a confirmation status report by June 4, 2026.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision forecloses statutory challenges to the administration’s policy of treating all entrants without inspection as § 1225(b) “applicants for admission,” but it does not resolve — and affirmatively left open — whether that policy violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction,” which limits due process rights in the admission context, does not extend to civil detention of noncitizens who have established substantial presence in the United States interior; those individuals retain a constitutional right to an individualized bond hearing.
- The government’s two recognized justifications for civil immigration detention — ensuring appearance at proceedings and preventing danger to the community — cannot be served by categorical mandatory detention that makes no individualized inquiry into flight risk or dangerousness; detention untethered from those purposes risks becoming punitive in violation of due process.
- Exhaustion of administrative remedies is excused where the BIA has issued binding precedent adverse to the petitioner’s claim, or where the challenge is constitutional rather than statutory in nature.
- The court expressly overruled its own prior precedents in similar cases, signaling a significant mid-course correction in how this district will handle § 1225(b) detention challenges going forward.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a rapidly expanding body of district court rulings pushing back against the Trump administration’s 2025-2026 policy of stripping bond hearings from noncitizens who entered without inspection. By grounding relief in the Fifth Amendment rather than statute, courts like this one have found a durable avenue for challenge that survives the Fifth Circuit’s statutory foreclosure in Buenrostro-Mendez. The ruling reinforces a growing consensus — reflected in cases from the Western District of Texas, the District of Massachusetts, and the Eastern District of Kentucky, among others — that the “entry fiction” of Thuraissigiam is geographically and contextually limited, and cannot be extended wholesale to eliminate due process rights for noncitizens long resident in the U.S. interior.
For immigration practitioners, the case provides a clear roadmap: statutory claims are currently foreclosed in the Fifth Circuit, but procedural due process challenges under Mathews v. Eldridge remain viable for clients with substantial U.S. presence who were detained without an individualized bond hearing. The court’s willingness to depart from its own prior rulings on the “entry fiction” question also signals that this area of law is in flux and that earlier adverse district court decisions in the circuit may not be the final word.