Decisions

W.D. Wash. February 11, 2026 826 F. Supp. 3d 1282; 2026 WL 381163 Third country: Uganda, by notice of intent September 2025. Requests later sent to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, with no reply.

A Russian man who arrived at a port of entry and was detained in May 2024 sought asylum on the ground that he feared persecution in Russia for opposing corruption. An immigration judge found he had a well-founded fear of future persecution by the Russian government and granted withholding of removal, recording that but for the presumption of ineligibility required by the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule she would have granted asylum outright. The government appealed, never filed a brief, and the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed the appeal in June 2025. The government then kept him in detention while it looked for a third country. The court ordered his release within one day. Removal to Russia was barred by the immigration judge's order, and the government did not address the point in its brief at all. Its own declaration showed it had served him with a notice of intent to remove him to Uganda in September 2025, had then asked him to complete forms for the countries he had named, had not sent those requests to Denmark, Norway and Sweden until January 2026, and had received no reply from any of them. The court permanently barred removal to any third country without notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard in reopened removal proceedings with a hearing before an immigration judge. It set out the 9 July 2025 ICE memorandum in its own words, including the provision that where the Department of State believes diplomatic assurances credible, a person "may be removed without the need for further procedures." It recorded that the government itself accepts that courts in the district have found due process requires more than that policy, and it quoted the observation from Nguyen v. Scott that it would be impossible to comply both with Ninth Circuit precedent and the policy. It also held that the Supreme Court's stay in the D.V.D. class action does not bar an individual habeas petition, since it is not clear whether the stay rested on jurisdiction or on the merits, and one of the government's main arguments there concerned the power to grant class-wide relief, which has no bearing on individual cases. The punitive claim was refused, without prejudice. The court accepted that there is extensive evidence across multiple cases that the government is carrying out some third-country removals that are unconstitutionally punitive. But the law of permanent injunctions did not let it infer from those cases that everyone facing third-country removal is likely to suffer the same harm. It gave its reasons on these facts: this petitioner has no criminal record, and the countries the government had actually approached were Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Prolonged detention (Zadvydas) Withholding of removal Political persecution Third-country removal Notice Reopened removal proceedings Diplomatic assurances Unconstitutional punishment D.V.D. class action Effect of the Supreme Court stay

Caution The petitioner won release and the notice protections, and lost on punishment. That loss is the reason this entry is here. Read with Saadhom v. Bondi and with the two-stage sequence in Baltodano v. Bondi, it shows what the punitive finding has so far depended on. It is not a doctrinal dispute. Every court to consider it has accepted that some of these removals are punitive. What divides the outcomes is whether the person before the court was shown to be at risk of that particular fate, which has turned on who they are and where the government was actually trying to send them. Here the court pointed to a petitioner with no criminal record and to proposed destinations in northern Europe. The refusal was without prejudice, so it decides nothing for the future if the destination changes. The Uganda notice recorded in this decision is a court record of a proposed destination, not a finding about conditions there. A district court decision, binding only on the parties.