PINEDA CAMPOS v. Kaiser

Background

Jose Ivar Pineda Campos filed a petition asking for relief from his immigration detention and moved for a temporary restraining order. The opinion describes him as an asylum seeker who came to the United States from Nicaragua in April 2024. Federal agents initially detained and then released him on his own recognizance with a notice to appear in immigration court. According to the petition, he attended every immigration hearing, applied for asylum, and has no criminal history.

On August 15, 2025, Pineda Campos attended a hearing in San Francisco Immigration Court. The government moved to dismiss its removal case, but the immigration judge gave Pineda Campos time to respond and scheduled another hearing for November 7, 2025. Minutes after Pineda Campos left the courtroom, Department of Homeland Security agents arrested him. The opinion states that he was being held at 630 Sansome Street in San Francisco.

Pineda Campos asked the court to order his immediate release and to prevent the respondents from transferring him out of the district or removing him during the underlying proceedings. He argued that his arrest and detention violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause because the respondents allegedly lacked a valid basis for detention and because he had not received a bond hearing before detention.

Court’s Analysis

The court applied the standard for a temporary restraining order, which is the same standard used for a preliminary injunction. The court considered whether Pineda Campos was likely to succeed on the merits, likely to suffer irreparable harm without immediate relief, whether the balance of hardships favored him, and whether the injunction served the public interest.

The court found that Pineda Campos was likely to succeed on his procedural due process claim. It stated that the Due Process Clause entitled him to a bond hearing before an immigration judge before arrest or detention. The court also found that detention without a pre-detention hearing likely caused an immediate and irreparable deprivation of liberty. It concluded that the balance of hardships and the public interest favored temporary relief because protecting constitutional procedures against unlawful detention outweighed the government’s interest in a short delay in detention.

The court determined that the temporary order was needed to restore the status quo—the last uncontested situation before the dispute. It also exercised its discretion not to require Pineda Campos to post a bond because it found no realistic likelihood that the respondents would suffer compensable harm from the order. The court noted that moving Pineda Campos would not destroy its jurisdiction over the petition because the court could retain jurisdiction when a habeas petitioner is moved after properly filing a petition naming the immediate custodian.

Order

The court granted the temporary restraining order as modified. It ordered the respondents to immediately release Pineda Campos from custody. It barred them from re-detaining him without notice and a pre-deprivation hearing before a neutral decisionmaker, and it barred them from removing him from the United States. The order remained in effect until Saturday, August 30, 2025, at 5:00 p.m.

The respondents were required to file a status report confirming his release by noon on August 17, 2025. The court also ordered them to appear and show cause at a hearing on August 29, 2025, why a preliminary injunction should not issue, with a response due August 22 and any reply due August 26. This was a temporary ruling on emergency relief, not a final disposition of the underlying petition.