The petitioner, a woman from Mauritania, was granted withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture on 28 July 2025, after an immigration judge found it more likely than not that she would be persecuted and tortured if returned to Mauritania. Neither the government nor the immigration judge ever identified another country to which she could be removed during her removal proceedings. On 17 January 2026 an employee of CoreCivic, the contractor that runs the Laredo Processing Center, told her that she would be moved to Louisiana for removal to a third country on 20 January 2026. She received no written notice. The court granted a temporary restraining order on 18 January 2026, the day she filed. The government then told the court that on or about 16 January 2026 she had been approved for removal to a “safe third country,” specifically Equatorial Guinea.
The court held that 8 U.S.C. § 1252(g), (a)(5) and (b)(9) did not bar review, because she sought review not of the decision to execute her removal order but “of the process due to her under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause after that decision has been made.” It held the dispute ripe: her removal “was imminent at the time of Petitioner’s initial filing and continues to be imminent.”
On the merits it held that neither route under the March 2025 Guidance gives a meaningful opportunity to raise a fear claim: removal on diplomatic assurances without any individual assessment, and a fear screening by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services without an evidentiary hearing or review by an immigration judge. “Due process requires the Government to answer whether Ms. Mbaba specifically faces possible torture or persecution in Equatorial Guinea”, including whether removal there would lead to chain refoulement to Mauritania. The court concluded: “Thus, reliance on blanket assurances is no substitute for an individualized determination through a proceeding that is appropriately calibrated to provide notice and an opportunity to be heard.”
It held that reopened removal proceedings before an immigration judge are the right vehicle, and that a discretionary motion to reopen is not enough, because “due process requires assurance that reopened proceedings will in fact take place.” It rejected as “patently unreasonable and impracticable” the government’s argument that she should have foreseen removal to any country in the world and raised every such fear in her original proceedings. It also held that the Mandamus Act allowed it to require notice and an opportunity to be heard before any removal.
On irreparable harm the court recorded, from the petitioner’s reply citing The Africa Report of 16 January 2026, that “Equatorial Guinea has reportedly refouled eight out of the nine third-country removees it has received under the new third country removal policy.” It found that “there is very good reason to believe that Equatorial Guinea will likewise immediately send Ms. Mbaba back to Mauritania and to the hereditary chattel slavery that she escaped from.”