Saadhom v. Bondi

A twenty-two year old Egyptian man was ordered released after roughly seventeen months in immigration detention, eight of them after his removal order became final. An immigration judge had ordered him removed but granted withholding of removal to Egypt, which the court described, following the Ninth Circuit, as a powerful indication of the improbability of his foreseeable removal by any objective measure. He held no other citizenship and no country had agreed to take him. The court recorded what brought him to the United States. His father was arrested, detained, tortured and deprived of medical care after a dispute with a member of the Egyptian parliament over corruption in their village, and died. He then campaigned for an opposition candidate and continued that activity at his university, where he was a law student, and was himself arrested, detained and tortured as a political prisoner. The court ordered immediate release, required the government to confirm the release within forty-eight hours, prohibited re-detention without first complying with 8 C.F.R. 241.13(i) and 8 U.S.C. 1231, and prohibited removal to any third country without notice and a meaningful opportunity to respond. It set out what compliant notice requires: written notice of the country designated, the statutory basis for the designation, and an affirmative question to the person about whether they fear persecution or harm there, with the answer recorded in writing. It said the government's own policy does not inspire confidence that it can be relied on to provide that process without a court order. The punitive claim was refused, and the reason matters. The court held it did not have a sufficient basis to find the third-country removal programme unconstitutional as a whole, or punitive as applied to this man. The declaration he relied on came from Nguyen v. Scott and concerned pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrants and the resulting removals to South Sudan and Eswatini. He is Egyptian, and offered nothing about a removal practice specific to him or to people like him. The findings in the other cases, the court held, were specific to a particular population and particular destination countries and do not extend to these circumstances. The court also refused two further requests: a hearing before an immigration judge at which the government would have to prove danger or flight risk by clear and convincing evidence before any re-detention, and a set of four conditions the petitioner asked to be imposed before re-detention, neither of which it found any authority for.

Caution A district court decision, binding only on the parties. The petitioner won release and the procedural protections, and lost on punishment. That loss is the reason this entry is here. Read alongside Nguyen v. Scott, Abubaka v. Bondi, Hambarsonpour v. Bondi, Baltodano v. Bondi and Pham v. Warden, it shows that the punitive argument has so far turned on evidence about the destination rather than on the doctrine. Where a court has been shown what happens to people on arrival in a named country, it has found the practice punitive. Where it has not, it has declined, and has said the earlier findings were tied to a particular population and particular destinations. Judge Lasnik refused the same claim in Baltodano in November 2025 for want of that evidence and granted it in December once the evidence was supplied. The commercial reporter carried a positive signal on this decision as of September 2026.

Prolonged detention (Zadvydas) Withholding of removal CAT Redetention Revocation of supervision Third-country removal Notice Meaningful opportunity Diplomatic assurances Unconstitutional punishment Wong Wing Evidence of destination conditions

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