Reported / Citable
Background
Carlos Daniel Vasquez Martinez, a Salvadoran national, entered the United States without inspection in 2019 and had resided in the country since. On May 4, 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 arguing that his detention violated both the Immigration and Nationality Act and his constitutional right to procedural due process under the Fifth Amendment.
The government classified Vasquez Martinez as an “applicant for admission” under 8 U.S.C. § 1225 — a legal position formalized in mid-2025 through an ICE internal memorandum (the “Lyons Memo”) and the Board of Immigration Appeals’ precedential decision in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (BIA 2025). Under this new interpretation, noncitizens who entered without inspection are subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b), which provides no bond-hearing right, rather than discretionary detention under § 1226(a), which does. The Fifth Circuit subsequently foreclosed statutory challenges to this classification in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026), but expressly left the constitutional due process question open.
Judge Xavier Rodriguez, sitting in San Antonio, considered the petition alongside the government’s response and issued this order granting relief on due process grounds — explicitly departing from two of his own prior rulings, Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, in light of a growing district-court consensus and further consideration of the applicable law.
The Court’s Holding
The court held that detaining Vasquez Martinez without any individualized hearing to assess flight risk or danger to the community violates his right to procedural due process under the Fifth Amendment. Applying the three-part balancing test of Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the court found that his substantial liberty interest in freedom from physical restraint, the high risk of erroneous deprivation absent an individualized hearing, and the minimal additional burden on the government all weigh in favor of requiring at least some individualized assessment before civil immigration detention.
The court rejected the government’s argument that the Supreme Court’s “entry fiction” from DHS v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), strips noncitizens in Vasquez Martinez’s position of all due process rights beyond those Congress provides by statute. The court distinguished Thuraissigiam on two grounds: first, Vasquez Martinez challenges only his detention, not the admission or removal process; second, unlike the petitioner in Thuraissigiam who was apprehended twenty-five yards from the border immediately after entry, Vasquez Martinez has resided in the United States since 2019 and has developed substantial connections here. Under Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), the Due Process Clause applies to all persons within U.S. territory, and once a noncitizen enters and establishes a substantial presence, the “entry fiction” governing removal proceedings does not extinguish the due process interest in freedom from detention.
The court ordered respondents to release Vasquez Martinez from custody by June 3, 2026, under conditions no more restrictive than those in place before the challenged detention. Respondents were directed to notify petitioner’s counsel at least two hours before release, and to file a status report confirming release on June 4, 2026. The court also specified that any future re-detention must include an individualized bond hearing.
Key Takeaways
- The Fifth Circuit’s Buenrostro-Mendez decision foreclosing statutory challenges to mandatory detention under § 1225(b) did not resolve — and government counsel conceded it did not raise — the separate constitutional due process question; district courts retain full authority to grant habeas relief on due process grounds.
- Noncitizens who entered without inspection and have established a substantial presence in the United States are entitled to an individualized bond hearing before civil immigration detention; Thuraissigiam‘s “entry fiction” is limited to challenges to the admission and removal process, not to the legality of detention itself.
- Judge Rodriguez expressly overruled his own prior decisions in Canales-Melgar v. Noem and Goguev v. Noem, joining a growing consensus among Western District of Texas judges that the government’s post-2025 mandatory-detention policy violates procedural due process as applied to long-resident noncitizens.
- Civil immigration detention that serves no individualized regulatory purpose — i.e., where no finding of flight risk or dangerousness has been made — risks crossing the constitutional line from regulatory to punitive detention.
Why It Matters
This decision is part of a significant and rapidly developing split among federal district courts over the constitutional viability of the Biden-era-reversed, Trump-administration policy reclassifying all entered-without-inspection noncitizens as § 1225(b) mandatory detainees with no bond-hearing rights. The ruling directly challenges the government’s reliance on Thuraissigiam and Buenrostro-Mendez to avoid individualized detention review, and it signals that courts will scrutinize whether the “entry fiction” doctrine — historically confined to admissibility determinations — can constitutionally justify indefinite civil detention of long-resident noncitizens with deep community ties.
For immigration practitioners, the decision reinforces the viability of § 2241 habeas petitions as a vehicle for challenging § 1225(b) detention on due process grounds even after Buenrostro-Mendez, and underscores the importance of documenting a client’s length of U.S. presence and community connections when seeking release. With the underlying constitutional question still unresolved by the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court, further appellate development is expected.