Abubaka v. Bondi

A man admitted to the United States in 1989 as the child of a refugee, ordered removed to Vietnam in 2016, and held in immigration detention for nine months and ten days, was ordered released on conditions of supervision. The court found no significant likelihood of removal to Vietnam in the reasonably foreseeable future: the process for obtaining travel documents for immigrants who arrived from Vietnam before 1995 is uncertain and protracted, and the record did not show that the government had submitted a request at all, only that it was having forms translated. The court also held that the detention clock does not restart each time immigration authorities release and then re-detain the same person. The court separately barred removal to any third country without notice and a meaningful opportunity to respond in reopened removal proceedings. It noted that the government had stated in a footnote that under its policy of 9 July 2025 it is "no longer fully following" the process the same court required in Aden v. Nielsen in 2019, and had offered no explanation for the change. On the third question the court held that the government's practice of third-country removal paired with imprisonment is intended to be punitive and therefore violates due process under Wong Wing v. United States (1896) and Zadvydas v. Davis (2001), and ordered that the petitioner not be removed to any third country where he is likely to face imprisonment on arrival. The court adopted the findings made in Nguyen v. Scott, which rested in part on sworn declarations that people removed from the United States to South Sudan and Eswatini have been imprisoned incommunicado since their arrival, and in Eswatini in solitary confinement, and on public statements by government officials describing removal as a punishment. The government did not address the merits of the punitive claim, arguing only that the question was foreclosed by other litigation, which left the court, in its own words, "with no argument from respondents to consider on this topic."

Caution A decision of a single district court, binding on nobody but the parties. The court said as much about its own earlier ruling in Aden, which it described as persuasive rather than binding. The punitive holding rests on findings made in a different case, Nguyen v. Scott, which this court adopted rather than re-examined on its own record. It was also reached without argument from the government on the merits, which is a reason to read it closely rather than a defect in it, but it means the reasoning has not been tested against an opposing case. The commercial reporter carried a caution signal on the decision as of September 2026. The Coalition has not located any decision disturbing it, and records the signal rather than interpreting it. The punitive analysis this decision adopts was made in Nguyen v. Scott at the preliminary injunction stage on 21 August 2025. Nguyen was voluntarily dismissed by its petitioner the following month after an agreement between the parties and never reached a merits decision, a fact recorded in the published opinion in Baltodano v. Bondi, 815 F. Supp. 3d 1191. That does not make the findings wrong, and they have since been adopted on the records of other cases, but anyone relying on this line should know where it begins.

Prolonged detention (Zadvydas) Third-country removal Notice Reopened removal proceedings Unconstitutional punishment Wong Wing Incommunicado detention Solitary confinement

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