Ortiz Calderon v. Kaiser

Background

Carolina Ortiz Calderon, an asylum seeker from Colombia, arrived in the United States on June 3, 2024. Federal agents briefly detained her and then released her on her own recognizance under an immigration release document requiring her to attend hearings and interviews and comply with the law. She later filed applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture. The opinion states that she has no criminal history and has medical conditions requiring medication and continuing treatment.

On August 7, 2025, Ortiz Calderon attended her first master calendar hearing in immigration court without a lawyer. The Government orally moved to dismiss its removal case. Ortiz Calderon opposed the motion, and the immigration judge gave her time to respond and scheduled another hearing for September 4, 2025. Minutes after she left the courtroom, three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested her. The opinion states that the agents did not present a warrant and told her that the immigration judge had dismissed her case.

Ortiz Calderon filed a petition challenging her detention and requested emergency relief. On August 8, the court issued a temporary restraining order requiring the Government to release her and barring re-detention without notice and a hearing before a neutral decisionmaker. After briefing and a hearing, the court considered whether to issue a preliminary injunction.

Court’s Analysis

A preliminary injunction is temporary court-ordered relief issued before the case is finally decided. The court applied the four factors governing such relief: likely success on the legal claim, immediate and irreparable harm without an injunction, the balance of hardships, and the public interest.

The court found that Ortiz Calderon was likely to succeed on her claim that the Due Process Clause gives her a protected liberty interest in remaining out of custody and requires a hearing before she may be re-detained. The court reasoned that the Government had previously released her after determining that she was not a danger to the community or a flight risk, and that she had not violated the conditions of her release. The court rejected the Government’s argument that she had no such liberty interest because she was subject to expedited removal. The court stated that she remained in regular removal proceedings and that the Government had not placed her in expedited removal proceedings when it initially detained her.

Applying the three-part balancing test from Mathews v. Eldridge, the court found that Ortiz Calderon had a substantial interest in remaining out of custody, including continuing her employment and obtaining medical care. The court also found a high risk of an erroneous deprivation of liberty without a pre-detention hearing, particularly because she had no criminal history and had attended her scheduled hearing. Finally, the court found that the Government had identified no legitimate reason to detain her without a hearing and had not shown that providing a hearing would create a significant financial or administrative burden.

The court also found likely irreparable harm without an injunction. It identified the risk of re-detention in violation of constitutional rights, harm to Ortiz Calderon’s economic livelihood, and possible worsening of her medical and mental-health conditions in detention. The court concluded that the balance of hardships and public interest favored an injunction because protecting procedural safeguards against unlawful detention outweighed the limited harm to the Government from delaying any detention until a hearing. The court required no security because it found no realistic likelihood of harm to the Government from the injunction.

Ruling

Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted Ortiz Calderon’s request for a preliminary injunction. During the proceedings before the court, the Government may not re-detain Ortiz Calderon without first providing a bond hearing before a neutral immigration judge. At that hearing, the Government must demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that she is a flight risk or danger to the community and that no conditions short of detention would prevent those harms.

The court deferred ruling on Ortiz Calderon’s request to prevent the Government from transferring her out of the district. It ordered the Government to file a supplemental statement by August 29, 2025, addressing whether such a transfer would cause the court to lose jurisdiction over her detention challenge, and ordered the parties to file a proposed case-management schedule by September 5, 2025.