Reported / Citable
Background
Luis Arturo Nanez Gutierrez, a Mexican national, entered the United States without inspection in 2006 and had resided in the country for approximately twenty years. On April 14, 2026, he was arrested and transferred to the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas — without any bond hearing. He filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, arguing that his detention violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
The legal backdrop was shaped by a mid-2025 policy shift. In July 2025, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued a memorandum declaring that the agency had “revisited its legal position” and now classified all noncitizens who entered without inspection as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), rather than the discretionary detention scheme of § 1226(a) — which carries an entitlement to a bond hearing. The Board of Immigration Appeals formalized this view in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025). The Fifth Circuit then foreclosed statutory challenges to that interpretation in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026), but explicitly did not reach the due process question.
For nearly three decades before the Lyons Memo, the government had consistently treated noncitizens who entered without inspection as eligible for bond hearings under § 1226(a). The government’s reversal left long-term interior residents facing indefinite civil detention with no opportunity to demonstrate they posed neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition and ordered the petitioner released by June 18, 2026, on conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his detention. The court held that detaining a noncitizen with nearly twenty years of presence in the United States — without any individualized assessment of flight risk or dangerousness — violates the procedural due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment. Applying the three-part balancing test of Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court found that the petitioner’s significant liberty interest, the high risk of erroneous deprivation, and the relatively modest administrative burden of holding a bond hearing all weighed in his favor.
The court rejected the government’s reliance on Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), on two grounds. First, that case concerned challenges to removal proceedings and admissibility determinations, not challenges to the legality of detention itself. The petitioner here did not contest his removability; he merely sought a hearing on whether he should be released pending proceedings. Second, Thuraissigiam was apprehended twenty-five yards from the border immediately after entry and never released into the interior, whereas Nanez Gutierrez had lived in the United States for approximately twenty years. Under Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), and United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990), the Due Process Clause protects all persons within the territory of the United States, and aliens develop constitutional protections upon establishing substantial connections with the country.
Notably, the court expressly departed from its own prior rulings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem (SA-25-cv-1571-XR) and Goguev v. Noem (SA-25-cv-1593-XR), in which it had applied the “entry fiction” to the detention of noncitizens with substantial interior presence. The court explained that a growing consensus of district courts, further reflection on the applicable law, and the unresolved constitutional question left open by Buenrostro-Mendez warranted the change in course. Because the court granted the petition on due process grounds, it did not reach the petitioner’s APA challenge, over which it noted jurisdiction was likely lacking in any event.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision bars only statutory challenges to the government’s § 1225(b) mandatory-detention theory; it does not foreclose — and the government conceded at oral argument did not address — procedural due process claims.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” is limited to aliens at the threshold of initial entry and to challenges involving admissibility or removal proceedings; it does not eliminate due process rights of noncitizens who have established substantial interior presence.
- A noncitizen with approximately twenty years of continuous U.S. residence is entitled to an individualized bond hearing before civil detention; detention without that hearing violates the Fifth Amendment under the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test.
- The government’s longstanding prior practice of affording bond hearings to EWI aliens under § 1226(a) — reversed only in July 2025 — reinforces the constitutional expectation that such hearings are required.
- If re-detained, all applicable procedures, including a bond hearing, must be afforded; the court structured its release order to preserve rather than extinguish future procedural rights.
Why It Matters
This decision is a significant data point in a rapidly developing circuit split on whether the government may detain long-term interior residents indefinitely under § 1225(b) without any bond hearing. Judge Rodriguez’s willingness to overturn his own prior contrary rulings — citing a “growing consensus” of district courts — signals that the constitutional question is gaining traction even in courts that initially sided with the government. The opinion provides a detailed analytical framework for distinguishing Thuraissigiam by focusing on the distinction between detention and removal and on the noncitizen’s territorial connections, which other courts are likely to cite.
For practitioners, the ruling underscores that the constitutional due process claim remains viable for clients with substantial U.S. presence regardless of Buenrostro-Mendez, and that habeas petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 remain an available vehicle to challenge the § 1225(b) mandatory-detention theory on constitutional grounds. The Supreme Court has twice declined to resolve this exact question — in Jennings v. Rodriguez (2018) and Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez (2022) — leaving it to the lower courts, making decisions like this one critical precedent as the issue continues to percolate.