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.
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.
Redetention Order of supervision Compliance with regulations Burden of proof Prolonged detention (Zadvydas) Changed circumstances Due process
The court's own text
Read from the order of 16 October 2025, twenty-two pages. Two later federal decisions quote this case at 2025 WL 2937692, at *8 for the burden holding, which is how the pin cite was confirmed.
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