The petitioner, granted withholding of removal to Morocco on 25 June 2025 and detained from June 2025, was given a notice of removal to Cameroon on or about 8 January 2026. His petition, as the court quoted it, stated that the notice came “only after ICE was notified that this petition would be filed” and that “He has affirmatively asserted a fear of removal to Cameroon”. After he filed on 10 January 2026 the respondents transferred him to Texas, and they returned him to Colorado on 22 January 2026.
The court quoted the declaration of Mark Kinsey, a deportation officer in the Denver Field Office of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, filed by the respondents. It states that the petitioner was moved to the Port Isabel Service Processing Center “for staging for removal to Cameroon”, that he claimed fear, and that after a third-country screening interview “USCIS determined that Petitioner established it is more likely than not that he will be persecuted if removed to Cameroon.” It acknowledges the court’s order “prohibiting Petitioner’s removal from the District of Colorado or from the United States without further order of the Court”, and states that ICE “will determine whether to move to reopen proceedings before the immigration court for proceedings solely related to eligibility for withholding of removal or CAT protection, or designate another country for removal.”
The court held that the petitioner had shown good reason to believe that there was no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future, and that the respondents had not rebutted it. He had no travel documents to any other country, including Cameroon, and the respondents’ own evidence showed that removal to Cameroon was no longer in prospect. Of the declaration the court wrote: “These are not representations or arguments that demonstrate a good reason to believe removal is reasonably foreseeable.”
It rejected the argument that, as a member of the D.V.D. class, the petitioner could not obtain relief in this case, because he sought release from detention rather than more or different process, as the respondents themselves acknowledged. It ordered his immediate release.