Decisions

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.

W.D. Wash. December 23, 2025 817 F. Supp. 3d 1102; 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 265398 Third country: Mauritania and then Uganda, by successive statements of intent. Neither was ever pursued to the point of a travel document.

An Egyptian man was ordered released after two hundred and twenty-five days in immigration detention. An immigration judge had denied his asylum claim and ordered him removed to Egypt, but granted withholding of removal under the Convention against Torture, which meant a finding that if returned he would more likely than not be tortured. Both sides waived appeal. He has no citizenship or significant ties to any other country, no travel document had been obtained for anywhere, and no country had been identified as willing to take him. On detention the government offered no response at all. It conceded the six month period had passed, then ignored the burden that shifts to it. The court traced what the government had actually done. In May 2025 an officer told him of an intent to attempt removal to Mauritania. A consular request in June was unsuccessful. By September that plan had apparently been abandoned, because on 2 September, in the final days of the ninety day removal period, he was served with a notice of intent to remove him to Uganda. There was no evidence that any step was ever taken towards Uganda: no travel document sought, no interest shown by Uganda, no communication with Uganda about him at all, and Uganda was not among the consulates contacted. Then on 15 December, thirteen days after this petition was filed, he was handed a Mauritanian travel document application. The court said the government cannot overcome a pending petition by handing over an application and making a request to headquarters it could have made months earlier. The court rejected the argument that he lacked standing to challenge third-country removal. Standing was obvious, because the government conceded it was pursuing his removal to third countries. It added that the government's own assertion that he "has not independently raised fear in response to a notice of removal to Uganda" showed he had already been injured, because due process requires that a person be asked whether they fear the destination rather than left to volunteer it. It also rejected the argument that his membership of the D.V.D. class barred individual relief. The order sets out the 9 July 2025 ICE memorandum in detail, and it is the fullest account of that policy in this register. Where the United States has received diplomatic assurances the Department of State believes credible, a person "may be removed without the need for further procedures." Where it has not, an officer serves a notice of removal naming the country, but the policy states that ICE "will not affirmatively ask whether the [noncitizen] is afraid of being removed to the country of removal." ICE will generally wait at least twenty-four hours before removing, and in exigent circumstances only six. If the person does not affirmatively state a fear within twenty-four hours, they are removed. The court held these procedures fall far short of what due process requires, and found that the government had misrepresented what protections the policy actually gives. The punitive claim was refused without prejudice. The court recorded the petitioner's allegation, drawn from reporting in The New Yorker, that the government had attempted and completed an end run around the Convention against Torture by deporting a group of people to Ghana, which then sent them on to their countries of citizenship despite their fears of persecution. It noted that he did not substantiate the allegations, that the government did not deny them, and that courts in this district and across the country have recognised that the government is intentionally removing individuals to countries where they will be imprisoned. Even so, on these pleadings it had no sufficient basis to find the programme unconstitutional as a whole or punitive as applied to him, because the cases so finding were specific to a particular population and particular destination countries.

Prolonged detention (Zadvydas) CAT Withholding of removal Standing Ripeness Third-country removal Notice Reopened removal proceedings Diplomatic assurances ICE policy of 9 July 2025 Unconstitutional punishment D.V.D. class action

Caution A district court decision, binding only on the parties. The petitioner won release and the notice protections, and lost on punishment, without prejudice. The refusal follows the same line as Saadhom v. Bondi and Vashchuk v. Bondi. The court did not doubt that some of these removals are punishment. It said the findings to that effect were tied to particular populations and particular destinations, and that this petitioner had not connected himself to them. The Uganda and Mauritania notices recorded here are court records of what the government said it intended, not findings about conditions in either country. The court's point about Uganda was that nothing was ever done about it, which raises its own question about why the notice was served at all in the last days of the removal period. The account of the Ghana removals is the petitioner's allegation as the court recorded it, sourced to a magazine article. It is not a finding. The findings on Ghana are in D.A. v. Noem, recorded separately in this register.