Reported / Citable
Background
Wilman David Maestre Zambrano, a Venezuelan national, entered the United States without inspection in September 2022. Immigration authorities placed him in full removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a and released him into the country. He remained in the interior for over three years. On December 5, 2025, he was arrested and detained at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas—this time without any bond hearing.
His re-detention reflected a significant policy shift by the executive branch. In July 2025, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memorandum declaring that noncitizens who entered 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), eliminating bond-hearing eligibility for the entire class. The Fifth Circuit, in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026), subsequently foreclosed statutory challenges to the government’s new interpretation but did not address constitutional due process claims.
Maestre Zambrano filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that his detention without a bond hearing violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his Fifth Amendment due process rights. The government responded that, as an “applicant for admission” under § 1225, he was subject to mandatory detention and had no entitlement to an individualized bond determination.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition and ordered ICE to release Maestre Zambrano by June 18, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his December 2025 re-detention. The court dismissed any statutory claims foreclosed by Buenrostro-Mendez but held that the Fifth Circuit’s decision left the constitutional due process question entirely open—a point confirmed by the government’s own concession during oral argument in that appeal that “there’s not … a due process claim here.”
Applying the three-factor balancing test from Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court found that detaining a noncitizen with substantial U.S. presence without any individualized assessment of flight risk or dangerousness violates procedural due process. The court rejected the government’s reliance on Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), on two grounds: first, Maestre Zambrano challenges his detention, not the admission process; and second, unlike the petitioner in Thuraissigiam—who was apprehended twenty-five yards inside the border—Maestre Zambrano had lived in the United States for years and developed substantial connections, bringing him squarely within the Due Process Clause’s protection of “all persons within the territory of the United States.”
Notably, Judge Rodriguez expressly departed from his own earlier 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. The court cited a growing consensus among district courts within the Fifth Circuit holding that Thuraissigiam‘s entry fiction governs admission proceedings, not civil detention of individuals who have lived in the country’s interior.
Key Takeaways
- Noncitizens re-detained under the government’s novel § 1225 interpretation—after having been released into the U.S. interior and establishing substantial presence—have a cognizable Fifth Amendment due process right to an individualized bond hearing regardless of their formal status as “applicants for admission.”
- Buenrostro-Mendez closes the door on statutory challenges to mandatory detention under the government’s new § 1225 position, but leaves constitutional due process claims fully intact; courts in the Fifth Circuit are reaching those claims and largely granting relief.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” is limited to the admissibility context; it does not strip due process rights from noncitizens who have lived in the interior and developed substantial connections to the United States.
- The government’s prior practice of treating EWI noncitizens as entitled to bond hearings under § 1226(a) for nearly three decades informs the due process analysis, even if it does not control the statutory interpretation after Buenrostro-Mendez.
- If a re-detained noncitizen is released and then re-detained again, a bond hearing must be provided before continued civil detention.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of an accelerating wave of habeas grants by federal district courts in Texas and elsewhere rejecting the executive branch’s broad application of § 1225 mandatory detention to noncitizens long present in the U.S. interior. The opinion is particularly significant because Judge Rodriguez—who had previously sided with the government on the entry-fiction question—reversed course, citing the weight of emerging precedent. That self-correction signals how quickly the judicial consensus is solidifying around the view that Thuraissigiam was never meant to govern civil detention of interior-dwelling noncitizens.
The unresolved constitutional question will likely require resolution at the circuit level. Buenrostro-Mendez was remanded for further proceedings, presumably to address the very due process issue decided here. Until the Fifth Circuit speaks, detention conditions for thousands of individuals re-categorized as § 1225 applicants remain a live constitutional battleground, with district courts across the circuit reaching the merits and—increasingly—ruling for petitioners.