Reported / Citable
Background
Jorge Alberto Gonzalez, a Salvadoran national, last entered the United States without inspection in 2001 and had resided in the country for approximately 25 years. On January 18, 2026, he was arrested and detained at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas without being afforded a bond hearing. The government classified him as an “applicant for admission” under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b) — a legal category that, under the Trump administration’s July 2025 reinterpretation announced in an internal ICE memorandum (the “Lyons Memo”) and codified by the Board of Immigration Appeals in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025), subjects all noncitizens who entered without inspection to mandatory detention with no right to a bond hearing.
Gonzalez filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus arguing that his continued detention without an individualized hearing violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his procedural due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. The government opposed, relying on the Fifth Circuit’s February 2026 ruling in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026), which upheld the government’s statutory interpretation of Section 1225, and on the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), which it argued stripped all due process rights from noncitizens classified as applicants for admission.
The case was decided by U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez, who notably departed from his own prior holdings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, in which he had applied the “entry fiction” to deny similar claims by long-term interior residents.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Rodriguez granted the petition and ordered Gonzalez released by June 3, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his January 2026 detention. The court held that Buenrostro-Mendez foreclosed only the statutory challenge to the government’s reinterpretation of Section 1225; it expressly did not reach the due process question, which Government counsel conceded during oral argument was not before the Fifth Circuit. Constitutional claims therefore remained live and unresolved by that decision.
On the merits, the court held that Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” — under which noncitizens at the threshold of initial entry have only those rights regarding admission that Congress provides — does not govern Gonzalez’s challenge to detention. Two distinctions were dispositive: first, Gonzalez did not challenge his removal proceedings or assert a right to remain in the country; he sought only an individualized opportunity to apply for release. Second, having entered the United States in 2001 and lived here for 25 years, Gonzalez had established substantial connections to the country sufficient to trigger the full protection of the Due Process Clause, consistent with Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), and United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990).
Applying the three-factor balancing test from Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court found that all three factors — the weighty private interest in freedom from physical restraint, the high risk of erroneous deprivation without any individualized hearing, and the minimal additional fiscal burden of a bond proceeding — supported the conclusion that detaining a long-term interior resident without any individualized assessment of flight risk or dangerousness violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of procedural due process. The court further ordered that if Gonzalez is re-detained, a bond hearing must be provided, and required the government to file a status report confirming release by June 4, 2026.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision — which upheld the government’s statutory reading of Section 1225 — does not foreclose constitutional due process challenges; the Fifth Circuit expressly reserved the due process question, and district courts retain authority to grant habeas relief on that basis.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” is limited to determinations about admission and removal proceedings; it does not strip procedural due process rights from noncitizens with substantial, long-term presence in the United States who seek only a bond hearing — not a right to remain.
- Under Mathews v. Eldridge, indefinite civil immigration detention of long-term interior residents without any individualized assessment of flight risk or community danger violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, regardless of the statutory framework Congress has enacted.
- The government’s argument that Section 1225‘s mandatory detention scheme forecloses a due process bond-hearing claim was rejected as circular: the existence of a statute mandating detention cannot itself answer the constitutional question of what process is due before that detention is imposed.
- Judge Rodriguez expressly overruled his own prior decisions in Canales-Melgar and Goguev, signaling a notable judicial recalibration in this district as the body of case law has matured.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a rapidly expanding corpus of federal district court rulings — across the Western District of Texas and beyond — holding that the Trump administration’s 2025 reinterpretation of Section 1225, which eliminated bond hearings for all noncitizens who entered without inspection regardless of how long they have lived in the United States, is unconstitutional as applied to long-term interior residents. By grounding relief in procedural due process rather than statutory construction, these courts have opened a durable avenue for habeas challenges that survives the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Buenrostro-Mendez. The decision underscores that millions of undocumented individuals with decades of US residence occupy a constitutionally distinct category from those detained at or near the border, and that the government must offer at least some individualized process before imposing indefinite civil detention on them.
For practitioners, the opinion provides a detailed roadmap for bringing due process-based immigration detention challenges in the Fifth Circuit: establish substantial presence, distinguish Thuraissigiam on the removal-versus-detention axis and on the time-and-place-of-entry axis, invoke Mathews v. Eldridge, and note that Buenrostro-Mendez conceded the constitutional question was not before the Fifth Circuit. The case also illustrates the speed at which these proceedings can move — from detention in January 2026 to a federal court release order by June 2026.