Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Alex Alberto Flores Hernandez, who is held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has filed several habeas actions in the Eastern District of California against the warden of a California City facility. The court examined four of them, Nos. 1:26-cv-03870, 1:26-cv-04569, 1:26-cv-06169, and 1:26-cv-08099, and found them related under Local Rule 123(a), reasoning that assignment to one district judge and one magistrate judge would promote efficiency and economy for the court and likely convenience for the parties. The order stresses that relating cases under Local Rule 123 only assigns them to the same judges and does not consolidate them.
The reassigned case, now numbered 1:26-cv-08099-DAD-JDP, began on October 2, 2026, when petitioner filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 challenging his ICE detention, together with a motion for a temporary restraining order seeking immediate release. On October 8, 2026, respondent moved to dismiss, asserting that this was petitioner's third successive habeas petition in the district. That label was respondent's contention. The court had earlier told petitioner, in a June 24, 2026 order in No. 1:26-cv-04569 (2026 WL 1823000), that future petitions raising the same grounds would be summarily denied without further explanation. Those grounds were that his pre-final-removal-order detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) violated due process or the INA, or that his bond hearing did not comply with a District of Maryland order.
The Court’s Holding
Procedurally, the court ordered No. 1:26-cv-08099-TLN-CKD reassigned to District Judge Dale A. Drozd and Magistrate Judge Jeremy D. Peterson under Local Rule 123(c), which lets the judge with the lowest-numbered case order reassignment of higher-numbered cases on finding that it is likely to save judicial effort. Filings in the reassigned case now carry the caption 1:26-cv-08099-DAD-JDP, and the Clerk was directed to adjust the assignment of civil cases to compensate.
On the merits, the court found that petitioner's claims largely raise the same grounds he asserted in his earlier petitions. It also addressed one possible variation: to the extent petitioner argues that the length of his detention entitles him to a second bond hearing as a matter of due process, without showing the changed circumstances that § 1226(a) requires, the court held that the Ninth Circuit has foreclosed the argument. It relied on Rodriguez Diaz v. Garland, 53 F.4th 1189, 1212 (9th Cir. 2022), which states that "duration alone" cannot sustain a due process challenge by a detainee who has been afforded the process contemplated by § 1226(a) and its implementing regulations.
The court dismissed the petition as successive, denied the temporary restraining order motion as moot, granted respondent's motion to dismiss, and directed the Clerk to close the case. The order does not say whether the dismissal is with or without prejudice, and it addresses no leave to amend. Its stated dispositions concern only the reassigned case, not the other three related actions.
Key Takeaways
- Relating cases under Local Rule 123 places them before the same district and magistrate judges but does not consolidate them.
- Under Local Rule 123(c), the judge with the lowest-numbered related case may order higher-numbered cases reassigned when that is likely to save judicial effort, which moved No. 1:26-cv-08099 to Judge Drozd and Magistrate Judge Peterson.
- The court dismissed the October 2026 § 2241 petition as successive because it largely repeated grounds from earlier petitions, and it denied the accompanying restraining order motion as moot.
- The court treated Rodriguez Diaz v. Garland as foreclosing a claim that detention duration alone requires a second bond hearing without the changed circumstances required by § 1226(a).
- Petitioner had been warned in June 2026 that repeat petitions on the same grounds would be summarily denied, and this order applies that warning by dismissing the new petition with a short explanation.
Why It Matters
This is an unpublished district court order, so it has no precedential weight; it binds only the parties and is persuasive at most. Its value lies in showing how one Eastern District of California judge handled repeat immigration-detention habeas filings: related petitions are routed to one judge, and a new petition that repeats previously rejected § 1226(a) due process arguments is dismissed as successive rather than examined afresh.
The order's limits matter. It rests on the court's conclusion that the claims largely duplicated earlier ones and on Rodriguez Diaz as to duration-based claims. It announces no new rule and does not decide whether materially changed circumstances or a different legal ground would warrant a different result.