Elias C. v. Bondi
Elias C. v. Pamela Bondi, Attorney General; Kristi Noem, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Department of Homeland Security; Todd M. Lyons, Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Sirce Owen, Acting Director for Executive Office for Immigration Review; Executive Office for Immigration Review; Samuel Olson, Acting Director, St. Paul Field Office Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and Joel Brott, Sheriff of Sherburne County
- Eric Tostrud
- 0:26-cv-00307
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 5
Counsel of record per CourtListener. Firm names are approximate.
In Elias C. v. Bondi, Judge Tostrud ruled Elias was detained under the wrong statute and granted relief requiring a bond hearing.
Elias C. receives the bond hearing ordered by the court, and the respondents are prohibited from denying it on the ground that mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2) applies.
What happened
In Elias C. v. Bondi, Elias C., a Venezuelan citizen, challenged his detention after immigration officials took him into custody. He argued that officials wrongly treated him as subject to mandatory detention and denied him a bond hearing.
Elias argued that the law governing people already living in the United States applied to him, while the respondents argued that his petition failed for the reasons given in an earlier related case. The court ruled that the statute for people already in the country applied because Elias had lived in the United States for more than two years.
Judge Eric C. Tostrud granted Elias’s petition, declared that he was not subject to mandatory detention under the statute for people seeking admission, and ordered the respondents to provide him with a bond hearing under the discretionary-detention statute.
The detailed version
- Elias C. v. Bondi · No. 0:26-cv-00307
- Eric Tostrud
- Jan. 20, 2026
Background
Elias C. is a Venezuelan citizen who entered the United States without inspection on August 9, 2023. He filed an asylum application on December 29, 2023, and received an employment authorization document on June 27, 2024. He was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on December 27, 2025, and was being held at an immigration detention center in Elk River, Minnesota.
Elias filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, a statute allowing a person to challenge certain unlawful custody. He claimed that officials wrongly classified him as a person subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2), instead of treating him as a person subject to discretionary detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226. He argued that this classification denied him the bond hearing to which he was entitled and violated the Fifth Amendment’s due-process guarantee, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the detention statutes and regulations.
Arguments and analysis
The federal respondents argued in a one-paragraph response that Elias’s petition raised issues similar to those in prior petitions decided by the District of Minnesota and failed for the reasons stated in an earlier related proceeding. The opinion also addressed subject-matter jurisdiction, explaining that the court had jurisdiction to decide the narrow question whether Elias was subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b)(2) or discretionary detention under § 1226.
The court explained that § 1225(b)(2) applies to applicants seeking admission, while § 1226 applies to noncitizens already in the country. Because Elias had lived in the United States for more than two years, the court held that his detention fell under § 1226 rather than § 1225(b)(2). The court therefore concluded that Elias was subject to discretionary detention and entitled to a bond hearing.
Ruling
Judge Eric C. Tostrud granted Elias C.’s petition. The court declared that Elias was not subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2) and was instead subject, if detained, to the discretionary provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1226.
The court enjoined the respondents from denying Elias a bond hearing on the ground that § 1225(b)(2) applied to him. It ordered the respondents to provide him with a bond hearing under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a)(2)(A). The court did not address Elias’s remaining arguments.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.