The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is considering three appeals that address whether noncitizens subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2) have a due process right to challenge their detention under the Fifth Amendment. The stakes are incredibly high. Given the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, millions of noncitizens who entered this country without inspection—many years or even decades ago—are now at risk of being detained in the Fifth Circuit without any opportunity to show their detention is unnecessary.
In 2025, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice abandoned three decades of agency practice and judicial understanding by arguing that the mandatory detention provision at 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2) applies to all noncitizens who entered the United States without inspection. Notably, over 400 federal district court judges from across the country, appointed by every president since Ronald Reagan, and a panel of the Seventh Circuit, have rejected the government’s new interpretation of the statute. But in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, 166 F.4th 494 (5th Cir. 2026) the Fifth Circuit embraced the government’s new reading. Thus all noncitizens who entered without inspection who are detained pending their removal proceedings within the Fifth Circuit—which includes Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and is the circuit with the largest detained population—are no longer eligible as a statutory matter to a bond hearing. Nevertheless, district courts within the circuit have continued to grant habeas petitions on Fifth Amendment due process grounds.
The habeas petitioners in this case—Miguel Angel Gomez Alvarado, Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez, and Alejandro Villegas Angel—have lived in the United States for decades after entering without inspection. None have criminal histories. All three are raising young U.S. citizen children who depend on them in myriad ways. In each case, the district court found that while Buenrostro-Mendez dictated that they were subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b)(2), their detention without a bond hearing violated due process. The court ordered their immediate release and forbade their re-detention without a bond hearing. The government appealed all three decisions and sought expedited review. The Fifth Circuit will hear oral argument in these consolidated appeals on April 29, 2026.
The petitioners are represented by the American Immigration Council, the National Immigration Project, Garza & Narvaez, PLCC, and Law Offices of Stephen A. Lagana.Sosnava Rodriguez v. Ortega, Case No. 26-50183 (5th Cir.); Villegas Angel v. Mullin, Case No. 26-50219 (5th Cir.); Gomez Alvarado v. Vergara, Case No. 26-50221 (5th Cir.)
