Herrera Avila v. Bondi: The Eighth Circuit Joins the Fifth, and the Mandatory-Detention Split Hardens
- Citation
- Herrera Avila v. Bondi, 170 F.4th 1128 (8th Cir. 2026) (No. 25-3248)
- Court
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
- Decided
- March 25, 2026
- Statute
- 8 U.S.C. §§ 1225(b)(2)(A), 1226; 28 U.S.C. § 2241; Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause
- Holding
- “Applicant for admission” and “seeking admission” are synonymous; any unadmitted noncitizen present in the United States is subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b)(2)(A) without a bond hearing. District court’s habeas grant reversed, 2–1.
Joaquin Herrera Avila had lived in the United States for roughly twenty years when, on August 29, 2025, deportation officers stopped him as he drove along Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis. He had built a quiet, law-abiding life. ICE detained him without a bond hearing under the 2025 reclassification theory. A district court granted his habeas petition, reasoning that § 1225(b)(2)(A) was written for people at the border or actively seeking entry, not for those long settled in the interior. A divided panel of the Eighth Circuit reversed.
The majority
The 2–1 majority held that the phrases “applicant for admission” and “seeking admission” mean the same thing, and that any noncitizen present without having been lawfully admitted qualifies — regardless of how long ago entry occurred. On that reading, Herrera Avila and, as the dissent put it, millions of others are subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b)(2)(A) with no statutory right to a bond hearing. The majority followed the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, decided weeks earlier, declining to read an entry-based or border-proximity limit into the text.
Judge Erickson’s dissent
Judge Ralph Erickson dissented. He emphasized that the government relied on neither a new act of Congress nor a change in the governing regulations, but on a fresh reading of a decades-old statute — one that, in his words, had eluded the courts and five previous presidential administrations. Invoking Zadvydas v. Davis and the longstanding distinction between those at the border and those who have effected an entry, he warned that the majority’s interpretation worked a sweeping change in the liberty of long-resident noncitizens on the strength of an interpretive maneuver alone.
“A novel interpretation of ‘alien seeking admission’ that eluded the courts and five previous presidential administrations should give us pause.” — Erickson, J., dissenting
Where it leaves the law
Herrera Avila put the Eighth Circuit on the government’s side of the split, joining the Fifth and opposing the Second, Sixth, and Eleventh. The disagreement is no longer academic: identical petitions now produce opposite outcomes depending on the circuit of confinement, and the government’s practice of choosing where to detain has acquired outcome-determinative significance. The case is among the cleanest vehicles imaginable for the Supreme Court to resolve whether the § 1225/§ 1226 line turns on the act of seeking admission or on bare presence.
Filed under Pre-Removal Detention. Published March 25, 2026.