Reported / Citable
Background
Quoc Anh Tran, a Vietnamese national, entered the United States without inspection in October 2024. Following his apprehension, he was placed in full removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a and released into the country pending those proceedings — a release that, under governing regulations, required a government finding that he posed neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. On February 24, 2026, Tran was arrested at a routine immigration check-in and detained at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center without any bond hearing.
The government justified its no-hearing position by reference to a policy shift that took effect in mid-2025. For roughly three decades, ICE had treated noncitizens who entered without inspection but were released into the interior as subject to discretionary detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), which entitles detainees to a bond hearing. In July 2025, then-Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons issued an internal memorandum announcing that the agency had “revisited its legal position” and now considered all “applicants for admission” — including those who entered without inspection — subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), with no entitlement to a bond hearing. The Board of Immigration Appeals endorsed that position in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025). The Fifth Circuit subsequently foreclosed statutory challenges to the new interpretation 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.
Tran filed a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, contending that his detention without an individualized bond hearing violated both the INA and his Fifth Amendment due process rights. Judge Xavier Rodriguez held that the statutory claim was foreclosed by Buenrostro-Mendez but that the constitutional claim remained open and, on the merits, required his release.
The Court’s Holding
The court granted the petition on procedural due process grounds and ordered Tran released by June 3, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before his re-detention. It held that noncitizens who have entered the United States and established substantial presence here retain Fifth Amendment due process rights with respect to their detention, even if they have reduced rights regarding the admission process. Critically, the court distinguished Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), which the government cited for the proposition that “applicants for admission” possess only those rights Congress chooses to grant. The court read Thuraissigiam as limited to challenges to admissibility determinations and to aliens apprehended at or immediately adjacent to the border — not to detention challenges brought by individuals who have lived in the country’s interior.
Applying the three-part Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, the court found all factors weighed in Tran’s favor: (1) his liberty interest in freedom from physical restraint is substantial; (2) the risk of erroneous deprivation is high because, by definition, every noncitizen previously released into the interior had already been individually assessed as neither a flight risk nor a danger, and re-detention without any hearing strips away that prior finding; and (3) the government’s administrative burden in providing bond hearings is modest relative to the individual’s interest. The court also rejected the government’s circular reasoning — that a bond hearing is constitutionally unnecessary because § 1225(b) makes detention mandatory regardless of flight risk or dangerousness — noting that statutory mandates cannot override constitutional procedural requirements.
The court explicitly departed from its own prior decisions in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, in which it had applied the “entry fiction” to uphold the detention of noncitizens with substantial domestic presence, stating that a growing district-court consensus and further legal analysis warranted the change in course. It declined to reach Tran’s APA claim, over which it likely lacked jurisdiction in the absence of final agency action.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez ruling forecloses statutory challenges to the government’s reclassification of EWI aliens as § 1225(b) mandatory detainees, but it does not foreclose constitutional due process challenges — government counsel conceded as much at oral argument.
- Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” limits the process owed in admission proceedings; it does not eliminate the right to an individualized bond hearing for noncitizens with substantial territorial presence who challenge their detention.
- Because all noncitizens previously paroled or released into the interior were individually vetted as non-dangerous and non-flight-risk, re-detaining them without any hearing carries a constitutionally significant risk of erroneous deprivation under Mathews.
- If Tran is re-detained at any point, the government must afford him a bond hearing before or promptly after re-detention.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a rapidly expanding body of district-court rulings — concentrated in the Western District of Texas but extending across multiple circuits — that are carving out a constitutional floor for immigration detainees with substantial domestic presence, even as the Fifth Circuit has shut the door on statutory arguments. For practitioners, the key lesson is that habeas petitions grounded in procedural due process remain viable for clients who entered without inspection and were subsequently released into the interior, regardless of Buenrostro-Mendez and the BIA’s Yajure Hurtado precedent.
More broadly, the ruling underscores the unresolved tension between Congress’s power to define the terms of admission and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that no “person” — including an undocumented noncitizen living in the American interior — may be deprived of liberty without due process. Until the Supreme Court directly addresses whether the Thuraissigiam entry fiction extends to detention as well as admissibility, district courts will continue to produce conflicting outcomes, making venue and the speed of habeas filings critical variables in these cases.