Decisions

C.D. Cal. August 24, 2026

Accepting the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the United States Magistrate Judge after de novo review of the portions to which the government objected, the court granted the petition. It ordered that Respondents are “ENJOINED from re-detaining Petitioner under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) unless his re-detention is ordered at a custody hearing before a neutral arbiter in which the government bears the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that Petitioner is a flight risk or danger to the community.” Judgment was entered the same day in favour of the petitioner.

Order of supervision Revocation Redetention Custody hearing Burden of proof

Caution An unreported district court order. The reasoning is in the Magistrate Judge’s Report and Recommendation, which the Coalition has not obtained; this order adopts it without restating it. Note also that the injunction is framed in terms of 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), whereas the February 2026 preliminary injunction in the same case turned on 8 C.F.R. § 241.13(i); the file does not explain the shift.

E.D. Cal. February 25, 2026 Investigating. No reporter citation established. Third country: No third country was ever identified by the government. The injunction runs against removal to any of them without a fear hearing first.

Sam Sarfarzi-Esfahari had a final order of removal to Iran dating from 8 October 2004, deferral of removal under the Convention against Torture, and had been living under an Order of Supervision. He was re-detained. The court held that re-detaining him under the written policy he challenged violated due process, granted the petition, and ordered a bond hearing within fourteen days at which the government would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that he was a flight risk or a danger, failing which he was to be released. It separately barred the government from removing him to any third country without first giving him an individualised opportunity to say that he feared that country. On the question whether a challenge to a written policy is ripe before any particular third country has been named, the court held that it is, quoting the Ninth Circuit: where the harm alleged is directly traceable to a written policy there is an implicit likelihood of its repetition in the immediate future.

Third-country removal CAT deferral CAT Order of supervision Redetention Prolonged detention (Zadvydas) Notice Due process Standing Ripeness Bond hearing Burden of proof Compliance with regulations ICE policy of 9 July 2025

Caution A district court decision. It binds the parties to it and nobody else. The relief has two halves and they are not the same: the detention half was granted in a narrower form than the magistrate judge had recommended, because the district judge ordered a hearing rather than immediate release. Note also the date. A document of 26 January 2026 in this case is findings and recommendations by a magistrate judge, which is a proposal and not an order. The operative decision is the order of 25 February 2026 adopting it in part. Citing the January date as the grant of relief would be wrong.

E.D. Cal. February 3, 2026 2026 WL 145631 (for the original order of 20 January 2026). The number itself sits behind a paid service and could not be confirmed from a public source. Third country: None identified. The removal in prospect was to China.

Xiao Luo Huang was re-detained after Immigration and Customs Enforcement revoked his supervised release. The court held that the government had failed to show changed circumstances establishing a significant likelihood of his removal to China, and went further on what follows from that failure. In its words: "And where an immigration regulation is promulgated to protect a fundamental right derived from the Constitution or a federal statute and ICE fails to adhere to it, the challenged action is invalid." And: "Here, DHS’s failure to follow its own procedural regulations constitutes a due process violation." The agency’s own rules, in other words, are not internal housekeeping that it may set aside at will. Breaking them is itself the constitutional wrong. He was ordered released.

Redetention Order of supervision Compliance with regulations Due process Prolonged detention (Zadvydas) Changed circumstances Burden of proof

Caution A district court decision, binding on the parties only. Take care with which order is being cited. The order of 20 January 2026 was superseded by an amended order of 3 February 2026 carrying the same two sentences, and the petition was then granted outright on 25 February 2026. A current citation should run to the amended order rather than the first one.

E.D. Cal. November 7, 2025 2025 WL 3123793 Third country: None identified in the order.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement revoked the petitioner’s supervised release and re-detained her without showing changed circumstances or a significant likelihood that she would be removed in the reasonably foreseeable future, and without following its own regulations on the review of release decisions. The court granted an injunction and ordered her released. The passage of the decision that later courts cite gathers the earlier cases on where the burden lies, and it is that discussion, rather than the outcome, that has carried into the cases that followed.

Redetention Order of supervision Compliance with regulations Prolonged detention (Zadvydas) Changed circumstances Burden of proof Due process

Caution A district court decision, binding on the parties only. The court anonymised the petitioner to initials in the caption, so the case is filed on the public docket under a different name, Xie v. Lyons. Both names refer to the same case, and the anonymised form is the one the court itself uses in the decision.

S.D. Tex. October 16, 2025 2025 WL 2937692 Third country: None identified in the order.

Iyad Muhammad Abuelhawa was living under an Order of Supervision when Immigration and Customs Enforcement revoked it and re-detained him. The regulation that allows revocation requires changed circumstances making removal significantly likely in the reasonably foreseeable future. The court held that the burden of showing this rests on the government and on nobody else: upon revocation of release, the government bears the burden to show a significant likelihood that the person may be removed in the reasonably foreseeable future, and the required showing, by its terms, can only be made by the government. Here it had identified no changed circumstances at all. He was ordered released back to his previous conditions.

Redetention Order of supervision Compliance with regulations Burden of proof Prolonged detention (Zadvydas) Changed circumstances Due process

Caution A district court decision in the Southern District of Texas, binding on the parties only and persuasive at most anywhere else. It is recorded here because the burden question it decides recurs across this whole line of cases, and because later decisions in California cite it. A secondary research memorandum placed this case among decisions of the Northern District of California. It is not one.