Reported / Citable
Background
Adrian Jose Medina-Gutierrez, a Venezuelan national, entered the United States without inspection in August 2022. He was apprehended, placed in formal removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a, and released into the country. On March 25, 2026, he was re-arrested and detained at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas — without a bond hearing. He filed a pro se habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 challenging his detention as a violation of both the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The detention arose from a significant policy shift. In July 2025, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memorandum reversing nearly three decades of agency practice. Where the government had historically classified people present in the United States without admission or parole under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) — entitling them to bond hearings — the Lyons Memo reclassified them as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention without bond under § 1225(b). The Board of Immigration Appeals formally adopted this position in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025). In February 2026, the Fifth Circuit in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi foreclosed statutory challenges to this new classification, but expressly left due process claims unresolved.
Respondents argued the court lacked jurisdiction, that Petitioner had failed to exhaust administrative remedies, and that the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), stripped noncitizens classified as “applicants for admission” of due process rights beyond what Congress provides by statute. The government also relied on Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. 281 (2018), for the proposition that § 1225(b) mandates detention with no bond hearing requirement.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition. The court first confirmed jurisdiction under § 2241, reaffirming its prior rulings that the INA’s jurisdiction-stripping provisions — §§ 1252(g), 1252(b)(9), 1225(b)(4), and 1226(e) — apply to challenges to removal proceedings and discretionary detention decisions, not to constitutional challenges to detention itself. The court also waived any exhaustion requirement, finding that an administrative appeal to the BIA would be futile given that body’s binding precedent in Yajure Hurtado, and noting that constitutional detention challenges require no administrative exhaustion.
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 apply to Petitioner for two reasons. First, Petitioner does not challenge his admission or removal, only his physical detention; Thuraissigiam addressed the former. Second, Petitioner’s substantial presence in the United States since 2022 — including a prior government release into the interior — materially distinguishes him from the petitioner in Thuraissigiam, who was apprehended twenty-five yards from the border and never released. Under Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), and Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (1896), due process protections attach to all persons within U.S. territory.
Applying the three-part Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, the court found that detaining Petitioner without any individualized assessment of flight risk or dangerousness violates procedural due process. The court ordered Petitioner’s release by June 5, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his March 2026 re-arrest, and directed that any future re-detention be preceded by a bond hearing. The court also explicitly departed from its own earlier decisions in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, in which it had held the entry fiction applicable to detention.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez ruling forecloses statutory challenges to classifying EWI noncitizens under § 1225(b), but leaves constitutional due process claims fully intact and available in district court habeas proceedings.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” applies to challenges to admission and removal proceedings, not to the independent question of whether prolonged civil detention without an individualized hearing violates the Due Process Clause — particularly for noncitizens with substantial U.S. presence who were previously released into the interior.
- Under Mathews v. Eldridge, noncitizens who have developed substantial connections to the United States are entitled to an individualized bond hearing before or promptly after detention, regardless of whether they are classified as “applicants for admission” under § 1225(b).
- The government’s prior release of a noncitizen into the interior — after an individualized finding of no flight risk or danger — is constitutionally significant: it cannot be silently erased by a subsequent policy memo reclassifying detention authority.
Why It Matters
This decision joins a rapidly growing body of district court rulings across the Fifth Circuit holding that the Biden-to-Trump-era policy shift — reclassifying the detention of interior noncitizens from § 1226(a) to § 1225(b) to eliminate bond hearings — violates the Due Process Clause as applied to individuals with substantial U.S. presence. The ruling is particularly significant because the same judge is departing from his own prior contrary holdings, reflecting a consolidating judicial consensus around the Thuraissigiam distinction. With Buenrostro-Mendez having closed the statutory door, the due process path is now the primary avenue for EWI detainees challenging indefinite detention without a bond hearing.
For practitioners, the case reinforces that habeas corpus remains a viable and immediate remedy for immigration detainees in the Western District of Texas. The court’s analysis — distinguishing removal-related due process limits from detention-specific due process rights, and anchoring Mathews balancing to the government’s own prior individualized release finding — provides a replicable framework for similarly situated petitioners held under the Lyons Memo’s expanded § 1225(b) classification.