Rodriguez Romero v. Ladwig: Re-Detaining People ICE Had Already Released, and the Limits of Zadvydas
- Citation
- Rodriguez Romero v. Ladwig, No. 3:25-cv-01106 (M.D. La. Feb. 6, 2026)
- Court
- U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana
- Decided
- February 6, 2026
- Judge
- John W. deGravelles
- Statute
- 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(6); 28 U.S.C. § 2241; Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001)
- Holding
- Continued post-removal-order detention of noncitizens previously released on supervision was unlawful where removal remained not reasonably foreseeable and ICE neither followed its own revocation regulations nor showed changed circumstances. Petition granted; release ordered.
The petitioners in Rodriguez Romero v. Ladwig had already been released once. Each was subject to a final order of removal that the government had been unable to carry out; each had been placed on an order of supervision after ICE itself determined that removal was not practicable and that they posed no danger to the community. Then, in 2025, ICE re-detained them. Four of them filed a joint petition for habeas corpus under § 2241, and the Middle District of Louisiana ordered them freed.
The Zadvydas framework
The governing law is Zadvydas v. Davis, in which the Supreme Court construed the post-removal detention statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(6), to permit detention only for a period reasonably necessary to effect removal. After the presumptively reasonable six-month period, a noncitizen who provides good reason to believe there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future is entitled to release unless the government rebuts that showing. The petitioners’ own histories supplied the showing: ICE had previously conceded the impracticability of removal by releasing them in the first place.
The court found that nothing material had changed. Removal remained no more foreseeable than when ICE released them, and the government had not followed its own regulations governing the revocation of supervision or identified the changed circumstances those regulations require. Re-detention on that record could not be squared with Zadvydas.
“Having once determined that these petitioners could not be removed and need not be detained, the government cannot reverse course without explaining what has changed.”
A pattern worth watching
The decision ordered release on short notice and barred re-detention absent the process the regulations require. It is a useful marker of how the 2025 enforcement surge reached even people the government had long since let go: the re-detention of noncitizens on orders of supervision has become its own small docket, and Zadvydas remains the most reliable tool for challenging it. The case sits alongside this archive’s other post-removal entries — the recalcitrant-country cases and the CAT-withholding cases — in mapping the revival of a corner of habeas practice that had been comparatively quiet for two decades.
Filed under Post-Removal Detention. Published February 6, 2026.