Black v. Almodovar: The Second Circuit Reaffirms Its Prolonged-Detention Framework
- Citation
- Black v. Almodovar, Nos. 20-3224, 22-70 (2d Cir. Oct. 24, 2025)
- Court
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
- Decided
- October 24, 2025
- Statute
- 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c); 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a); Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause
- Holding
- Reaffirms framework requiring individualized custody determinations after prolonged § 1226(c) detention, with the government bearing the burden by clear and convincing evidence; rejects argument that § 1226(c) detention has a definite termination point obviating the need for hearings.
By the autumn of 2025, the Trump administration had grown impatient with the Second Circuit’s framework in Black v. Decker. Substitution of respondents (now Almodovar) and renewed briefing gave the government an opportunity to argue that the original ruling had been wrongly decided, that Jennings foreclosed as-applied due-process analysis, and that the supposed “definite termination point” of § 1226(c) detention — final order of removal — meant no bond hearing was ever constitutionally required.
On October 24, 2025, the Second Circuit declined the invitation. Black v. Almodovar reaffirms the original framework, addresses the government’s new arguments on the merits, and adds doctrinal precision to the prolonged-detention analysis.
The “definite termination point” argument
The government’s most novel contention was that § 1226(c) detention is necessarily bounded because it ends when removal proceedings end. That terminus, the government argued, gave the detention sufficient definiteness to survive due-process scrutiny without periodic bond review. The court rejected the argument as unmoored from the actual experience of detained class members, many of whom were two and three years into proceedings with no foreseeable end. The constitutional concern was not the absence of any termination point but the absence of any meaningful interim review during what could be years of confinement.
The Mathews framework, restated
The court retraced the Mathews v. Eldridge analysis: the petitioner’s liberty interest is at maximum where physical confinement is at issue; the risk of erroneous deprivation under existing procedures is high where there is no process at all; and the government’s administrative interest in continued detention is comparatively modest given that bond determinations are routinely made by IJs in other detention contexts. The clear-and-convincing burden, the court explained, allocates the risk of error in the direction the Constitution prefers when liberty is at stake.
“The risk of erroneous deprivation, where there is no process at all, is total. The Constitution does not tolerate that risk in the prolonged-detention context.”
Significance
Black v. Almodovar matters for two reasons. First, it cements the Second Circuit’s position against renewed government attack and supplies the analytical backbone for the circuit’s April 2026 decision rejecting the post-July 2025 EWI mandatory-detention framework on the merits. Second, by directly addressing and rejecting the “definite termination point” argument, the opinion deprives the government of a key contention in any forthcoming Supreme Court briefing on the prolonged-detention question.
For practitioners, the case confirms that the clear-and-convincing-evidence rule applies to both § 1226(c) and § 1226(a) prolonged detention in the Second Circuit. The framework is now uniform across the circuit’s detention docket, and the government bears the burden in every prolonged-detention bond hearing the courts of the Second Circuit order.
Filed under Pre-Removal Detention. Published October 24, 2025.