By the time Enzzo Enmanuel de Jesus Lopez-Arevelo walked into a Miami immigration courtroom Aug. 8, 2025, his life in the U.S. had already taken several dramatic turns, as detailed by a federal district court case in Texas.
Lopez-Arevelo, a 39-year-old Venezuelan national, had been in the U.S. for exactly three years. He crossed near Calexico, California, in 2022 and was paroled into the country while pursuing an asylum claim after protesting President Nicolás Maduro and drawing the ire of Venezuelan security forces. With a letter of instructions from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he settled in Miami, where relatives lived.
He was recruited by a construction company, where he worked long hours in dangerous conditions, was threatened if he complained and was not paid promised wages. In 2023, he and other workers won a default judgement against the company for trafficking and wage violations. He reported the trafficking to Homeland Security Investigations and Maryland’s Office of Attorney General. Although HSI declined prosecution, the Maryland AG considered him a key witness and successfully obtained “Continued Presence” authorization for him from the Department of Homeland Security which houses ICE. He also applied for a visa for trafficking victims, to supplement a work authorization he already held through his pending asylum claim.
At the Aug. 8 hearing, after a judge dismissed removal proceedings, Lopez-Arevelo stepped into the courthouse lobby and was arrested by ICE agents, placed into expedited removal proceedings and ultimately sent to detention in El Paso.
The government would later argue in a case before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone, a President George W. Bush appointee in El Paso, that its recent reinterpretation of longstanding immigration law subjects Lopez-Arevelo — and thousands of other noncitizens like him — to mandatory detention without a bond hearing, even though he has no criminal record. A pro bono legal team of lawyers in the Houston and Washington, D.C., offices of Steptoe is representing Lopez-Arevelo.
Federal district court judges in Texas — from across the political spectrum — are rejecting the Trump administration’s reinterpretation of immigration law in order to detain immigrants without the opportunity to seek bond while they contest the government’s attempts to deport them, even if they’ve lived in the U.S. for decades and have no criminal record.
A hearing in one such case before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is scheduled for Tuesday morning. The case, Victor Buenrostro-Mendez v. Pamela Bondi, et al, will be heard by Judges Edith H. Jones, a President Ronald Reagan appointee, Stuart Kyle Duncan, a President Trump appointee, and Dana M. Douglas, a President Joe Biden appointee.
U.S. District Judge Leon Schydlower in El Paso recently sent a notice to lawyers in such habeas cases alerting them to the Fifth Circuit hearing and encouraging them to be prepared for dispositive hearings following the panel’s opinion. Judge Schydlower wrote that as of Jan. 29, his court has 134 such pending cases and receives up to 25 cases weekly.
“The Court anticipates that once the Fifth Circuit issues its opinion, the undersigned may have between 200 to 250 pending cases regarding this issue,” Judge Schydlower’s notice reads. “To ensure prompt resolution of the cases and to avoid the need to await individualized written opinions and rulings, the Court may conduct live hearings in these cases during which the undersigned may rule from the bench on the record, especially if the Fifth Circuit’s resolution of the issue mandates bond hearings in the immigration courts and/or the petitioners’ release. Accordingly, if the Court decides to hold such hearings, out-of-town counsel should be prepared to travel to El Paso to appear live on short notice. Alternatively, out-of-town counsel may retain local El Paso counsel to appear on their behalf.”
At the center of the government’s new interpretation are the mandatory and discretionary detention provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act. (The provisions in question are 8 U.S.C. Sections 1225 and 1226.)
One provision applies to “arriving” noncitizens who are deemed “applicants for admission” and are “seeking admission” to the country. Immigration agencies and courts have long interpreted this provision to cover individuals apprehended at or near the border as they enter the country. Detention under this statute is generally mandatory, with only narrow exceptions, and individuals held pursuant to it have little opportunity to seek release while deportation or asylum proceedings are pending.
The other provision permits, but does not require, immigration authorities to detain noncitizens who are not treated as applicants for admission and who are already present in the U.S. This provision has long been applied to undocumented immigrants who have lived in the country for years, including many who were paroled into the U.S. after encounters with immigration officials at the border. Many have established substantial ties to the U.S., including American citizen spouses or children, employment authorization and pending applications for asylum or other forms of lawful status.
Under long-standing regulations, people subject to detention under this provision may seek a bond hearing in immigration court, an administrative court system housed within the executive branch. Immigration judges, who are executive branch employees, determine whether individuals pose dangers to the public and what conditions are necessary to ensure their appearance at future proceedings. Where those concerns are not present, judges set a bond.
But last year, the government deviated from its longstanding interpretation and began classifying virtually all deportation targets as “applicants for admission,” therefore eliminating their opportunity to seek bond. In September, ICE received support for this approach from the Board of Immigration Appeals, an executive-branch tribunal that sets binding policy for immigration courts nationwide, in the case Matter of Yajure Hurtado. The federal judiciary, however, is not bound by the rulings of the executive branch immigration courts. So, immigrants are turning to the federal courts by filing cases against the wardens and members of the Trump administration including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons.
“In recent weeks, courts across the country have held that this new, expansive interpretation of mandatory detention under the INA is either incorrect or likely incorrect,” Judge Cardone wrote in September.
The government admitted in Lopez-Arevelo’s case that the reinterpretation is causing confusion. In her order, Judge Cardone quoted the government from a Sept. 8 hearing as saying, “This is confusing everyone right now … admittedly because DHS … since 1996 has interpreted that people like Mr. Lopez[-Arevelo] in this situation, if they are placed into full removal proceedings, despite the fact that they are applicants for admission – for the past 30 years, DHS has allowed them to get a bond.”
Judge Cardone ultimately wrote that because Lopez-Arevelo challenged his detention on constitutional grounds, as a violation of due process, and not on statutory interpretation grounds, she did not need to consider whether the recent interpretation is a proper reading of the INA. Instead, Judge Cardone weighed whether the policies were applied to Lopez-Arevelo in an unconstitutional manner.
She found that detaining Lopez-Arevelo “without any individualized assessment of his flight risk and dangerousness deprives him of his constitutional right to procedural due process under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.” She noted that a growing number of district courts across the country have reached the same conclusion.
Since then, Judge Cardone’s decision has been referenced by other federal district court judges in Texas who have reached the same conclusion, including U.S. District Judge Jason Pulliam, a Trump-appointee in San Antonio.
Judge Pulliam, in fact, ordered the parties to submit supplemental briefings addressing “significant similarities” between a case styled Hernandez-Fernandez v. Lyons and Lopez-Arevelo.
The judges appear to be “understandably skeptical” of the government’s new interpretation given the long history of interpreting the applicability of Section 1226 to persons who are present in the U.S. and not classifying them as applicants for admission, said Daniel H. Weiss, former immigration judge who now serves as adjunct faculty at SMU Dedman School of Law and senior counsel with Roy Petty & Associates in Dallas. The level of bipartisan agreement could suggest that the government’s position is likely incorrect, he said, but that the outcome of the Fifth Circuit panel hearing Tuesday could be influential.
“That all may change after the Fifth Circuit argument tomorrow, because we’ve had lots of district court judges addressing the issue in differing ways, but we have yet to have a circuit court decision on the issue. And that will certainly advance the controversy,” Weiss said, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if the issue is ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In many cases, judges, including Judge Cardone and Judge Pulliam in the above cases, have required the administration to at least give the detainees a chance to seek bond from immigration judges. Both Lopez-Arevelo and Hernandez-Fernandez were released after ultimately receiving hearings.
In some cases, judges are ordering detainees immediately released from custody. Such was the case for Weaver Johnston Nelson member Charles Gearing, who recently represented on a pro bono basis a Mexican citizen who has been living in the U.S. for 28 years and is married with kids to a U.S. citizen. The U.S. district judge who ordered the release of Gearing’s client, Samuel Frederick “Fred” Biery Jr., is the Bill Clinton-appointee in San Antonio who on Jan. 31 ordered the release of a 5-year-old whose photo of him being detained wearing a Spider-Man backpack and a blue knit bunny hat has spurred outrage in Minnesota and across the country. Judge Biery ordered the release of the child and his father in a scathing three-page opinion that has gained widespread coverage across the country.
But in December, Judge Biery ordered the release of Gearing’s client, Pedro Romo Navarro, in a 15-page opinion that also cited Lopez-Arevelo. Judge Biery explained his decision to release Navarro, writing, “If the Court ordered a bond hearing, it would require the immigration judge to do that, which in light of BIA precedent, the judge would not believe she had jurisdiction to do.”