Reported / Citable
Background
Fernando Jose Ortiz-Perez, a Venezuelan national, entered the United States without inspection in October 2021. He was placed in full removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a and released into the country, where he established a substantial presence over the following years. On June 2, 2026, he was arrested and detained without a bond hearing at the Karnes County Immigrant Processing Center in Karnes City, Texas.
The government classified Ortiz-Perez as an “applicant for admission” under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(a)(1) — a position the government adopted in a July 2025 internal ICE memorandum (the “Lyons Memo”) and that the Board of Immigration Appeals subsequently codified in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025). Under that reinterpretation, individuals who entered without inspection are subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b)(2)(A) with no bond hearing, reversing nearly three decades of agency practice treating such individuals as detainable under § 1226(a) and entitled to bond hearings.
Ortiz-Perez filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, arguing that his detention without any individualized assessment of flight risk or dangerousness violates the Immigration and Nationality Act and his constitutional right to procedural due process. The court dismissed his statutory claims as foreclosed by the Fifth Circuit’s February 2026 ruling in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496, but reached the constitutional question.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition on procedural due process grounds, ordering Ortiz-Perez’s release by June 18, 2026 under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his detention. The court held that the government’s “entry fiction” from Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020) — which limits due process rights for aliens at the threshold of initial entry — does not foreclose his claim for two reasons: (1) he challenges his detention, not the admission process or his right to remain in the United States; and (2) unlike the petitioner in Thuraissigiam, who was apprehended twenty-five yards from the border and never released, Ortiz-Perez entered the country in 2021, was released by the government, and established substantial presence in the United States, triggering the Due Process Clause’s protections for all “persons within the territory of the United States.” Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 238 (1896).
Applying the three-factor Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, the court found that all factors favor the petitioner: his liberty interest is profound; the risk of erroneous deprivation is high given that his prior government-sanctioned release itself reflected an individualized finding that he posed neither a security risk nor a flight risk; and the government’s administrative burden of conducting a bond hearing is minimal. The court expressly departed from its own prior holdings 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 detention of noncitizens with substantial U.S. presence, citing a growing district-court consensus that Thuraissigiam is limited to aliens at the threshold of initial entry.
The court also rejected the government’s argument that Buenrostro-Mendez forecloses due process challenges. Government counsel had conceded at Fifth Circuit oral argument that only the statutory question was before that court, and the Fifth Circuit remanded rather than dismissed — confirming that constitutional claims remain open. The court ordered that if Ortiz-Perez is re-detained, all applicable procedures must be followed, including a bond hearing.
Key Takeaways
- The government’s post-2025 reinterpretation of § 1225(b) — subjecting all individuals who entered without inspection to mandatory detention with no bond hearing — does not insulate detention from constitutional due process scrutiny, even after Buenrostro-Mendez closed the statutory door.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction,” which strips near-border arrivals of due process rights in admission proceedings, does not extend to noncitizens who have entered the interior, been released by the government, and established substantial U.S. presence; those individuals retain Fifth Amendment liberty interests subject to Mathews v. Eldridge balancing.
- A government-sanctioned prior release — which itself required an individualized finding of no flight risk or danger — weighs heavily in the Mathews analysis and makes bondless re-detention constitutionally suspect.
- The court explicitly reversed its own earlier contrary holdings, signaling a growing judicial consensus across the Western District of Texas and other circuits that mandatory detention without a bond hearing violates procedural due process for noncitizens with substantial U.S. presence.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a rapidly developing body of district court law testing the outer constitutional limits of the Trump administration’s 2025 reinterpretation of § 1225(b). By rejecting the government’s argument that Buenrostro-Mendez and Thuraissigiam together foreclose all relief, the court signals that habeas challenges on due process grounds remain a viable avenue for noncitizens with substantial U.S. presence who are detained without bond hearings — even as statutory and APA avenues close. The decision also carries significance because Judge Rodriguez is departing from his own earlier rulings, reflecting how quickly judicial consensus on this question is shifting.
For practitioners, the holding underscores the importance of framing challenges as procedural due process claims rather than statutory ones, and of developing the record on a client’s length of U.S. presence and prior government-sanctioned release. The constitutional question left open by Jennings v. Rodriguez (2018) and Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez (2022) continues to be resolved piecemeal in the district courts, and circuit-level resolution — particularly from the Fifth Circuit on remand in Buenrostro-Mendez — will be critical to watch.