Reported / Citable
Background
Juan Rodriguez-Zapata, a Mexican citizen, entered the United States without inspection in February 2022 and resided in the country continuously for over four years. On May 2, 2026, he was arrested by immigration authorities and detained at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas — without any 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 due process.
The government classified Rodriguez-Zapata as an “applicant for admission” subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), which — unlike § 1226(a) — does not entitle a detainee to a bond hearing. This classification followed a significant policy shift: in July 2025, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memorandum reversing nearly three decades of agency practice and reclassifying interior entrants without inspection from § 1226(a) (discretionary detention with bond hearings) to § 1225(b) (mandatory detention without bond hearings). The Board of Immigration Appeals ratified this interpretation in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025). In February 2026, the Fifth Circuit in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi upheld the government’s statutory position but expressly declined to address the constitutional due process question, remanding for further proceedings.
Rodriguez-Zapata’s habeas petition presented the due process question that Buenrostro-Mendez left open. The government opposed relief, arguing that as an “applicant for admission” he possessed no due process right to a bond hearing, and that Supreme Court precedent — particularly Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam (2020) — foreclosed his constitutional claims under the so-called “entry fiction.”
The Court’s Holding
Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted the petition and ordered Rodriguez-Zapata released by June 3, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his detention, with notice to counsel at least two hours before release. The court held that Rodriguez-Zapata’s detention without an individualized bond hearing violated his right to procedural due process under the Fifth Amendment, applying the balancing test of Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976).
The court rejected the government’s reliance on Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” on two independent grounds. First, Rodriguez-Zapata challenged his detention, not the admission or removal process — a distinction the court found legally dispositive. Nothing in Thuraissigiam addresses due process rights regarding physical detention as opposed to admissibility determinations. Second, Rodriguez-Zapata’s more than four years of residence in the United States gave him substantial connections to the country, placing him categorically apart from the petitioner in Thuraissigiam, who was detained within twenty-five yards of the border immediately after crossing. Under Zadvydas v. Davis and Wong Wing v. United States, the Due Process Clause extends to all persons within U.S. territory, and an alien who has established substantial presence cannot be treated as though he never entered.
Analyzing the Mathews factors, the court found that all three weigh in the petitioner’s favor: (1) physical liberty is among the most fundamental protected interests; (2) mandatory detention without any individualized flight-risk or dangerousness assessment carries a high risk of erroneous deprivation, given that prior release itself reflected a government finding of no security or flight risk; and (3) the administrative burden of conducting a bond hearing is modest relative to the constitutional stakes. The court explicitly departed from its own prior rulings in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, acknowledging a growing consensus among district courts within the Fifth Circuit that Thuraissigiam does not bar due process challenges by detainees with substantial U.S. presence.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision forecloses statutory challenges to the government’s reclassification of interior entrants under § 1225(b), but it does not foreclose constitutional due process challenges — a point the court emphasized with reference to government counsel’s own concession at oral argument in Buenrostro-Mendez.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” limits due process rights in admission and removal proceedings, but does not extend to bar procedural due process claims regarding civil immigration detention, particularly for noncitizens who have established substantial presence in the United States.
- Noncitizens in the interior who were previously released or paroled — and thus were already found to pose no security or flight risk — have a strong procedural due process claim when the government re-detains them without any individualized hearing under the Lyons Memo reclassification.
- Civil immigration detention must be supported by an individualized assessment of flight risk and dangerousness; detention untethered from those regulatory goals risks becoming punitive in violation of the Constitution.
Why It Matters
This decision reflects a growing body of district court rulings within the Fifth Circuit finding that the Biden-era policy reversal — reclassifying long-term interior residents as § 1225(b) mandatory detainees with no right to a bond hearing — cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny as applied to individuals with substantial U.S. presence. By departing from its own prior precedent and aligning with the emerging consensus, the court signals that the Lyons Memo’s broad application faces durable due process obstacles regardless of its statutory validity after Buenrostro-Mendez.
For practitioners, the ruling underscores that habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 remains a viable avenue for challenging immigration detention on constitutional grounds even where statutory avenues are closed, and that length of U.S. residence and prior government-sanctioned release are critical facts in establishing the due process right to an individualized bond hearing. The Fifth Circuit’s forthcoming resolution of the due process question in Buenrostro-Mendez on remand will likely determine whether this constitutional protection survives appellate scrutiny.