Reported / Citable
Background
Eliakim Palacios Ramirez, a Mexican national, entered the United States without inspection in January 2012 and resided in the country for over fourteen years. On May 14, 2026, he was arrested and held at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Karnes City, Texas, without being afforded a bond hearing. He filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus asserting that his detention violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his constitutional right to procedural due process.
His detention arose from a significant policy shift by ICE. In July 2025, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memorandum announcing that the agency had “revisited its legal position” and determined that 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)—governing applicants for admission—rather than § 1226(a)—governing aliens already present in the United States—was the applicable detention authority for all noncitizens who entered without inspection. The Board of Immigration Appeals codified this position in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025), eliminating bond hearings for this population. In February 2026, the Fifth Circuit foreclosed statutory challenges to this policy in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496, 2026 WL 323330 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026), but expressly left the constitutional due process question unresolved.
The federal government argued that the court lacked jurisdiction and that the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), foreclosed any due process challenge, because noncitizens who entered without inspection are deemed “applicants for admission” who stand at the legal threshold of entry and possess only such rights as Congress has provided by statute.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the habeas petition and ordered Ramirez’s release by June 17, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his May 2026 detention. The court held that it possessed subject-matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 because the INA’s jurisdiction-stripping provisions address challenges to removal proceedings and discretionary detention decisions, not constitutional challenges to the fact of detention itself. The exhaustion requirement was excused because the BIA had issued binding adverse precedent, making further administrative pursuit futile, and because constitutional procedural due process claims need not be exhausted administratively.
On the merits, the court held that Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction”—which limits due process protections for aliens “at the threshold of initial entry”—does not apply to Ramirez for two independent reasons. First, he challenges his detention, not any aspect of the admissions process or his right to remain in the United States; Thuraissigiam addressed only the process due in removal and credible-fear proceedings. Second, Ramirez’s fourteen years of continuous residence established substantial connections to the United States sufficient to trigger full Fifth Amendment protections under Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), and Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (1896). The “entry fiction” applicable to removal proceedings does not erase the constitutional rights of noncitizens who have entered the interior and built substantial ties.
Applying the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, the court found that all three factors—the severity of the private liberty interest, the high risk of erroneous deprivation without individualized assessment, and the modest administrative burden of a bond hearing—weigh in favor of requiring an individualized determination of flight risk and danger to the community before civil immigration detention may continue. The court also expressly departed from its own prior holdings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem, No. SA-25-cv-1571-XR, and Goguev v. Noem, No. SA-25-cv-1593-XR, in which it had previously applied the entry fiction to interior detainees.
Key Takeaways
- Buenrostro-Mendez bars statutory INA challenges to ICE’s § 1225(b) detention policy, but because the Fifth Circuit expressly did not reach the constitutional question, procedural due process claims remain fully available in district court.
- The Thuraissigiam “entry fiction” is limited to the admissions context; it does not defeat due process challenges to civil detention brought by noncitizens who have established substantial presence in the United States interior.
- Noncitizens who entered without inspection and have resided in the country for an extended period are entitled to an individualized bond hearing—an assessment of flight risk and danger to the community—before being detained without release eligibility under § 1225(b).
- The court’s willingness to overrule its own prior precedent reflects a growing district-court consensus across the Western District of Texas and beyond that the government’s post-2025 interpretation of § 1225(b) violates procedural due process as applied to long-term interior residents.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a rapidly developing body of district court law testing the constitutional limits of the Trump administration’s 2025 policy shift that reclassified millions of long-term undocumented residents as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory, no-bond detention under § 1225(b). While the Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez ruling closed the statutory door, courts across the circuit—including this one with an explicit reversal of its own prior rulings—are consistently opening the constitutional door, holding that due process requires at least some individualized hearing before the government can detain a person who has spent years building a life inside the United States.
For practitioners, the case confirms that habeas petitions raising procedural due process claims remain viable in the Western District of Texas after Buenrostro-Mendez, and underscores the critical factual distinction between aliens apprehended at or near the border and those with years of established presence in the interior. The duration and depth of a petitioner’s ties to the United States—not simply the formal legal status of their entry—will be central to whether Thuraissigiam‘s entry fiction can be invoked to deny a bond hearing.