Alfonso Cardenas v. Albarran

Background

Five petitioners—Odtman Alfonso Cardenas Castellanos, Ermides Garzon Meneses, Alizda Nallive Lara Del Rio, Herlinda Patino Gonzalez, and Yolima Trujillo Mejia—filed an ex parte motion for a temporary restraining order. A temporary restraining order is short-term emergency relief intended to prevent immediate harm while the court considers longer-lasting relief.

According to the information available to the court, immigration officials had previously released the petitioners under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), which governs discretionary detention during pending removal proceedings. The petitioners had been found not to be flight risks or dangers to the community, had no criminal histories, and had complied with their immigration and court obligations. On September 18, 2025, they appeared in person for scheduled master calendar hearings. The government made oral motions to dismiss their immigration cases, and the immigration judge reset the hearings for October 9 so the petitioners could respond. Department of Homeland Security officials arrested them before they left the courthouse.

The petitioners asked the court to order their immediate release without bond or electronic monitoring. Alternatively, they requested release and prompt bond hearings at which the government would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that detention was justified.

Court’s analysis

The court concluded that the requirements for issuing a temporary restraining order without advance notice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(b) were satisfied. The petitioners’ attorney provided specific facts showing that immediate and irreparable harm could occur before the respondents could be heard and stated that counsel had attempted to contact the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Applying the standards used for preliminary injunctions, the court found that the petitioners were likely to succeed on their due-process claim, were likely to suffer irreparable harm without relief, and showed that the balance of equities and the public interest favored relief. The court held that the petitioners had a protected liberty interest in remaining out of custody. It also reasoned that the government’s apparent attempt to detain them under the mandatory-detention provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b), rather than under § 1226(a), could leave them without bond hearings or another way to challenge their detention.

The court applied the three-part due-process framework from Mathews v. Eldridge: the private interest affected, the risk of an erroneous deprivation and value of additional safeguards, and the government’s interest and the burdens of those safeguards. It concluded that these factors favored immediate release and notice and a pre-detention hearing before a neutral decisionmaker. The court also found that detention threatened constitutional liberty interests and that the government would suffer, at most, a short delay if detention were later shown to be legally justified.

Order

The court GRANTED the petitioners’ ex parte motion for a temporary restraining order to preserve the status quo pending further briefing and a hearing. Respondents were ORDERED to immediately release all five petitioners from custody. Respondents were ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from re-detaining the petitioners without notice and a pre-deprivation hearing before a neutral decisionmaker to determine whether detention was legally justified, and from removing them from the United States.

The order remained in effect until October 2, 2025, at 5 p.m. The court ordered the respondents to appear and show cause at an in-person hearing on September 23, 2025, why a preliminary injunction should not issue. The respondents’ response was due September 22, and any reply was due September 23. The petitioners could not be deported, removed, or transferred outside the United States until further order of the court.