Reported / Citable
Background
Carlos Yoan Hernandez Membreno, a Honduran national, entered the United States without inspection in August 2023. He was detained, placed in full removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a, and then released into the country — a release that, under governing regulations, required an individualized finding that he posed neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. He lived in the United States for roughly three years under those conditions of supervised release before ICE re-arrested and detained him without a bond hearing in April 2026.
The re-detention flowed from a policy shift that began in July 2025, when ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memorandum declaring that all noncitizens who entered without inspection are “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), not discretionary detention under § 1226(a). The Board of Immigration Appeals codified that position in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025), and the Fifth Circuit subsequently upheld the statutory interpretation in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026), foreclosing statutory challenges. The constitutional question, however, was expressly not addressed by the Fifth Circuit — a fact the district court found dispositive.
Hernandez Membreno, proceeding pro se, filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the Western District of Texas, arguing that his detention without any individualized bond hearing violated both the INA and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The government opposed, contending that the court lacked jurisdiction, that Buenrostro-Mendez foreclosed his claims, and that the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), stripped noncitizens who entered without inspection of any procedural due process rights regarding their detention.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition in full and ordered Hernandez Membreno released by June 17, 2026. The court first confirmed jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, rejecting the government’s jurisdiction-stripping arguments as inapposite — provisions like §§ 1252(g) and 1226(e) bar review of removal proceedings and discretionary detention decisions, not mandatory detention challenges on constitutional grounds. The court also declined to require exhaustion of administrative remedies, finding that the BIA’s recent binding precedent in Yajure Hurtado made resort to the agency futile and that constitutional detention claims need not be administratively exhausted.
On the merits, the court held that Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” — which limits due process rights for noncitizens treated “as if stopped at the border” — does not foreclose Hernandez Membreno’s challenge for two independent reasons. First, he challenges his detention, not the admission process; Thuraissigiam addressed only what process is owed when a noncitizen contests an admissibility determination, and the government conceded before the Fifth Circuit that Buenrostro-Mendez presented no due process claim. Second, Hernandez Membreno has substantial presence in the United States, having entered, been released into the interior, and resided here for years — placing him squarely within the Supreme Court’s recognition in Zadvydas v. Davis that “once an alien enters the country, the Due Process Clause applies to all ‘persons’ within the United States.”
Applying the three-part balancing test from Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court found all three factors weigh in the petitioner’s favor: the deprivation of physical liberty is a profound private interest; the risk of erroneous detention is high where no individualized flight-risk or dangerousness finding is made; and the government’s administrative burden in providing a bond hearing is slight relative to those interests. The court expressly departed from its own prior rulings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, acknowledging that further consideration of applicable law and a growing district-court consensus had changed its view.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision forecloses statutory challenges to the government’s reclassification of EWI aliens under § 1225(b), but leaves open — and does not answer — the constitutional due process question, which district courts must resolve independently.
- Thuraissigiam‘s entry fiction limits due process rights in the context of admission and removal proceedings; it does not extinguish the right to challenge the legality of physical detention for noncitizens who have entered the country and established substantial presence.
- Noncitizens who were previously released into the interior following individualized government findings of non-dangerousness and non-flight-risk cannot be re-detained under the government’s novel § 1225(b) interpretation without a bond hearing, consistent with Mathews v. Eldridge.
- The court noted that civil immigration detention becomes constitutionally suspect when it serves punitive rather than regulatory purposes — ensuring appearance at proceedings and preventing community danger — and that indefinite detention without any individualized hearing cannot be justified on regulatory grounds alone.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a rapidly developing line of district court authority — spanning courts across Texas, Massachusetts, Kentucky, California, and Missouri — holding that the Biden-era practice of releasing EWI noncitizens into the interior, followed by the Trump administration’s post-2025 policy of re-detaining them without bond under § 1225(b), cannot survive procedural due process scrutiny as applied to individuals with substantial U.S. presence. The ruling exposes a structural tension in immigration enforcement: the very regulatory procedures the government used to release these individuals (requiring findings of no flight risk or danger) now undercut the constitutional basis for re-detaining them without any hearing at all.
For practitioners, the decision is notable for two reasons beyond the merits. First, it represents a court reversing its own prior holdings in a fast-moving area of law, signaling that this issue remains live and unresolved at the district level pending Fifth Circuit guidance on the constitutional question. Second, it illustrates the limits of the government’s exhaustion and jurisdiction arguments in habeas cases where BIA precedent is already adverse and the challenge is constitutional rather than statutory — arguments courts across multiple circuits have now consistently rejected in this context.