Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Karam Kaloian entered the United States in January 2023 and immediately turned himself in to Customs and Border Protection. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained him for two weeks, then released him on an Order of Release on Recognizance while his asylum claim and a separate application for a U visa (available to crime victims who cooperate with law enforcement) worked their way through the system. For more than three years he lived in the community, held a work permit, held a job, and checked in with ICE as required.
During that period, Kaloian was arrested several times by local police, mostly for alcohol-related disorderly conduct, and was convicted of one misdemeanor reckless-driving charge. Several other charges were dismissed or remained pending. On May 11, 2026, Beverly Hills police cited him again for public intoxication. Three days later, when he showed up for a routine check-in at ICE’s supervision office, officers arrested him and sent him back into immigration detention, telling him the new citation violated the conditions of his release.
Kaloian filed a habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, arguing that his re-detention without any hearing beforehand violated due process, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The government argued he was, at most, entitled to a bond hearing because he belonged to a class of detainees covered by a separate class-action ruling. Magistrate Judge Patricia Donahue rejected that framing, finding Kaloian did not fit the class because ICE had detained him immediately upon arrival rather than letting him remain at large.
The Court’s Holding
The court granted the petition in part. Applying the three-factor balancing test from Mathews v. Eldridge, Judge Donahue held that once ICE released Kaloian on recognizance, he acquired a constitutionally protected liberty interest in remaining in the community — comparable to the interest the Supreme Court recognized for parolees and probationers in Morrissey v. Brewer and Gagnon v. Scarpelli. That interest could not be taken away without some process, because his conditional release carried an implicit promise that it would last unless he failed to meet the conditions.
The court nonetheless declined to require a hearing before re-detention. Unlike petitioners in other recent cases who were re-detained with no explanation or no new conduct, Kaloian had accumulated a pattern of alcohol-related arrests after his release, and ICE told him directly that his latest citation was the reason for the arrest. Given those changed circumstances and the notice he received, the risk of an erroneous deprivation did not require a hearing in advance. But due process does require a prompt post-deprivation check: an individualized bond hearing before an immigration judge under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), with the government bearing the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that continued detention is justified.
The court rejected the separate INA and APA claims. Kaloian had no statutory or regulatory basis requiring a pre-detention hearing, and because his criminal history supplied a rational basis for ICE’s decision, the agency’s action was not arbitrary or capricious under the APA. The court ordered Respondents to either grant Kaloian a bond hearing within seven days or release him, and denied his pending motion for a preliminary injunction as moot in light of that relief.
Key Takeaways
- A noncitizen released from ICE custody on an Order of Release on Recognizance acquires a protected liberty interest in staying out of custody, similar to a parolee or probationer’s interest in remaining free.
- Whether due process requires a hearing before or only after re-detention turns on the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test — courts look closely at whether ICE gave notice of a specific reason and whether there were genuinely changed circumstances (such as new arrests) since release.
- A documented pattern of post-release arrests, even without a conviction, can be enough of a “changed circumstance” to justify detaining someone first and giving them a hearing afterward, rather than requiring a hearing in advance.
- The remedy for an unconstitutional re-detention is often not automatic release but a prompt bond hearing before an immigration judge, with the government required to justify continued detention by clear and convincing evidence.
- Statutory (INA) and APA theories are harder to win than due process theories in this setting — courts have been more willing to find constitutional problems with ICE re-detention practices than to find them arbitrary and capricious or contrary to the immigration statutes.
Why It Matters
This order is part of a wave of 2025-2026 habeas litigation in California’s federal courts challenging ICE’s practice of re-arresting noncitizens who were previously released on recognizance or bond, often at routine check-ins. The decision illustrates how these cases are increasingly resolved: courts are recognizing a real constitutional stake in conditional release, but are calibrating the remedy to the facts rather than applying a blanket rule. A clean record tends to produce an order for a hearing before re-detention; a documented pattern of new arrests, as here, tends to produce only a right to a prompt hearing afterward.
For immigration and civil-rights practitioners, the case is a useful roadmap for how to litigate re-detention habeas petitions — it walks through the liberty-interest analysis, the Mathews factors, and the separate (and generally less successful) INA and APA theories in a single, well-organized opinion, and it shows how a client’s own post-release conduct can determine which side of the line a case falls on.