Reported / Citable
Background
Jose Valente Robles Almanza, a Mexican national, entered the United States without inspection in April 2004 and had resided continuously in the country for more than two decades. On May 13, 2026, he was arrested and detained at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Karnes City, Texas, without being afforded a bond hearing. He filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus asserting that his detention violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his constitutional right to procedural due process.
The government classified Almanza as an “applicant for admission” subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), relying on a July 2025 internal memorandum by ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons and the BIA’s subsequent precedential ruling in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025). Under that policy, all noncitizens who entered without inspection—regardless of how long they had lived in the United States—were reclassified as applicants for admission subject to mandatory detention with no right to a bond hearing. In February 2026, the Fifth Circuit in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi foreclosed statutory challenges to that classification but expressly left constitutional due process claims open.
In this petition, the government argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam (2020) extinguished any due process rights Almanza could assert because, as an “applicant for admission,” he was to be treated as if stopped at the border under the so-called “entry fiction.” The government further contended that a bond hearing was irrelevant under § 1225(b)’s mandatory detention scheme, and that Buenrostro-Mendez had effectively resolved the constitutional question.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the habeas petition and ordered Almanza released by June 3, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his detention. The court held that Almanza’s detention without any individualized assessment of flight risk or danger to the community violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of procedural due process. Applying the three-part balancing test of Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court found that his substantial liberty interest, the significant risk of erroneous deprivation absent a hearing, and the minimal administrative burden of holding a bond hearing all weighed in favor of affording him an individualized proceeding before continued detention.
The court distinguished Thuraissigiam on two independent grounds. First, Almanza challenged the legality of his detention, not the admission process—he sought only a chance to apply for release, not a right to remain in the country. Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” limits due process rights in admission proceedings but does not address the process due before continued civil imprisonment. Second, Almanza had resided in the United States for over twenty-two years. Unlike the petitioner in Thuraissigiam, who was apprehended within twenty-five yards of the border and never released, Almanza had established substantial connections to this country. Under Zadvydas v. Davis and Wong Wing v. United States, the Due Process Clause applies to all persons within U.S. territory, and a noncitizen’s years-long presence in the interior cannot be erased to strip him of constitutional protections.
The court also expressly departed from its own prior rulings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, in which it had applied the entry fiction to the detention of noncitizens with substantial U.S. presence. Citing a growing consensus among district courts within the Fifth Circuit, the court concluded that Thuraissigiam‘s limitation on due process is confined to aliens at the threshold of initial entry. The statutory claims were dismissed as foreclosed by Buenrostro-Mendez, and the APA claim was not reached.
Key Takeaways
- Federal district courts retain habeas jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 to adjudicate constitutional challenges to immigration detention; INA jurisdiction-stripping provisions (§§ 1252(g), (b)(9), 1225(b)(4), and 1226(e)) do not bar such claims.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” does not eliminate the procedural due process rights of noncitizens who have established substantial presence in the United States; the entry fiction governs rights in admission proceedings, not the process owed before civil detention.
- The Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi foreclosed only statutory challenges to the government’s § 1225(b) mandatory-detention policy; constitutional due process claims remained fully available and viable.
- Even under the government’s reclassification of long-term interior residents as “applicants for admission,” the Constitution requires an individualized bond hearing—including assessment of flight risk and dangerousness—before such persons may be civilly detained.
- The court ordered advance notice to defense counsel at least two hours before release and required a government status report confirming compliance.
Why It Matters
This decision is one of a growing line of rulings in which Western District of Texas judges have held that the Biden-era reversal—now the Trump administration’s July 2025 Lyons Memo—reclassifying long-resident, interior noncitizens as “applicants for admission” subject to no-bond mandatory detention runs into a constitutional wall for anyone with substantial ties to the United States. By explicitly departing from its own prior precedents and aligning with the emerging district-court consensus, the court signals that the due process floor for long-term residents cannot be legislated away by administrative reinterpretation of the INA, regardless of how the Fifth Circuit ultimately resolves the statutory question.
For practitioners, the ruling clarifies that constitutional exhaustion is not required, that Buenrostro-Mendez leaves the due process door open, and that length of presence in the United States is a constitutionally material fact in § 1225(b) detention cases. Until the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court squarely addresses the constitutional question, habeas petitions on behalf of long-term interior residents detained under the Lyons Memo policy remain a viable avenue for relief.