Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi: The Fifth Circuit Sides With the Government on EWI Detention
- Citation
- Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, No. 25-20496 (5th Cir. Feb. 6, 2026) (Jones, Duncan, JJ.; dissent)
- Court
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
- Decided
- February 6, 2026
- Statute
- 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A); 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a); 28 U.S.C. § 2241
- Holding
- All noncitizens present without admission are “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b)(2)(A) and statutorily ineligible for IJ bond hearings; reverses two underlying habeas grants.
The petitioners in Buenrostro-Mendez — consolidated with a companion case captioned Padron Covarrubias — were two longtime Mexican nationals who had entered without inspection years earlier (in 2009 and 2001 respectively). Both had families and ties in their districts of residence. Both were apprehended by ICE during interior enforcement operations in the spring of 2025. Both were detained under the new § 1225(b)(2)(A) framework, denied bond hearings, and subsequently obtained habeas-ordered IJ bond hearings followed by release. The government appealed.
The panel majority
Judges Edith Jones and Stuart Kyle Duncan, writing for a two-judge majority, accepted the government’s position essentially in full. The opinion holds that any noncitizen present in the United States without having been admitted is, for purposes of § 1225, an “applicant for admission.” Length of residence is irrelevant. Family or community ties are irrelevant. Whether the person was apprehended at the border or three thousand miles inland is irrelevant. Once classified as an applicant for admission, the noncitizen is subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b)(2)(A) and is, by statute, ineligible for an immigration-judge bond hearing.
The opinion takes pains to acknowledge the hundreds of district-court rulings to the contrary. “We are aware,” the majority writes, “of roughly 350 district court decisions reaching the opposite conclusion.” That awareness does not change the result. The text of the statute, in the majority’s reading, is sufficiently unambiguous to foreclose the contrary view.
The dissent
The third judge dissented sharply. The statutory text, the dissent argued, was anything but unambiguous: the BIA itself had read § 1226(a) to govern interior-apprehended EWI noncitizens for decades; the Justice Department had taken the same position in litigation as recently as 2023; and the legislative history of § 1225 made clear that “applicants for admission” was understood to refer to those at or near the border, not those who had years before crossed it. The dissent observed that the majority’s interpretation would effectively criminalize every prior bond hearing the agency had granted to similarly situated detainees.
“The majority’s reading would render every immigration-judge bond decision of the past three decades retroactively ultra vires.”
The circuit split
Buenrostro-Mendez creates an unusually clean circuit conflict. The District of Maldonado Bautista’s nationwide class judgment, the Seventh Circuit’s motions-panel ruling in Castañón Nava, the Second Circuit’s April 2026 decision rejecting the government’s reading on the merits, and the overwhelming weight of district-court authority all point in the opposite direction. Within the Fifth Circuit’s geography — which contains the largest detained immigration population in the country — the practical effect is to eliminate bond hearings for tens of thousands of EWI detainees overnight.
Significance
The decision is the highest-profile pro-government immigration ruling of the period. It is also the most significant single boost to ICE’s operational capacity to detain at scale: with bond hearings unavailable in the Fifth Circuit, the agency’s incentive to transfer detainees from circuit to circuit changes meaningfully. Forum-shopping by ICE, including transfers from the Second and Ninth Circuits to Texas and Louisiana, has already accelerated.
The split Buenrostro-Mendez creates is the most likely vehicle for Supreme Court review of the underlying statutory question. Whether the Court takes up the case from the Fifth Circuit, from the Second Circuit’s contrary April 2026 decision, or from the Ninth Circuit’s pending Bond Hearing Class appeal in Padilla v. ICE, some appellate vehicle will reach the Court within the next two terms. Until then, Buenrostro-Mendez is the controlling law in the most active immigration-detention region in the country.
Filed under Pre-Removal Detention. Published February 6, 2026.