Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Petitioner Gredy Gudiel Perez Perez, a 22-year-old native and citizen of Guatemala, entered the United States around December 2020 at age 16. He was taken into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement as an unaccompanied minor and was then released to his uncle. According to the petition, he applied for asylum in March 2023, that application is pending, he worked as a gardener, lived with his family, and has no criminal history.
The petition alleges that on August 18, 2026, masked, unidentified ICE officers arrested him as he walked to work, did not tell him why he was being detained, and gave him no opportunity to show that he is not a flight risk. On September 25, 2026, while held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, he filed a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. section 2241. He claimed that his detention violates procedural and substantive due process under the Fifth Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act, and he sought release along with declaratory and other injunctive relief.
On September 28, 2026, the court served respondents with its Briefing Order, which required a notice of appearance by October 1 and an answer by October 5. Respondents did neither and had not appeared when the court ruled. Because they supplied no information about petitioner and contested none of the petition's allegations, the court took its facts from the petition as uncontested. Those facts are petitioner's allegations, not findings tested in an adversarial proceeding. The court added that, because non-response has become respondents' standard practice in many similar cases, it did not view the failure as an oversight.
The Court’s Holding
The court granted the petition. It treated respondents' failure to respond or appear as a concession that the requested relief should be granted, citing several earlier Central District decisions that granted petitions on that basis. It also noted that it had previously found similarly situated people entitled to immediate release because they were redetained in violation of Fifth Amendment due process, and it cited four of its own earlier decisions: Hernandez Rosales, Zhang, Martinez Benitez, and Dagio Mondragon.
The order's merits discussion is short. The court granted the petition given respondents' lack of opposition and failure to appear, and for the reasons set out in those four decisions and the cases they cite. It did not separately analyze the Administrative Procedure Act claim or address the request for declaratory relief.
The court ordered that judgment be entered granting the petition and that respondents immediately release petitioner, with release conditions matching those in place before his most recent detention. Respondents must return any confiscated property and documents. They are enjoined from re-detaining him unless they show, by clear and convincing evidence at a pre-deprivation hearing before a neutral decisionmaker, that he presents a flight risk or a danger to the community. Respondents must file a status report by November 5, 2026, confirming his release. The order does not decide his asylum application, and it leaves the government able to seek re-detention if it makes the required showing at that hearing.
Key Takeaways
- Respondents' failure to appear or answer was treated as a concession that the relief should be granted, and the court relied on that concession together with its earlier decisions.
- The facts recited come from an unopposed petition, so they are allegations accepted as uncontested rather than findings made after adversarial testing.
- Relief goes beyond release: any re-detention requires a pre-deprivation hearing before a neutral decisionmaker at which the government must meet a clear and convincing standard.
- The order does not bar future detention outright, and it does not resolve petitioner's pending asylum application.
Why It Matters
The order shows how judges in the Central District handle immigration habeas petitions when the government does not participate under the court's General Order 26-05 briefing schedule: silence is treated as concession, and the court points to its earlier reasoning instead of writing at length. Readers seeking the legal analysis on redetention and due process must look to the cited decisions.
Its weight is limited. It is an unreported district court order by a magistrate judge, resting largely on non-opposition, and it binds no other court. A contested case with a developed government record could be decided differently, and the order does not say whether the government will seek further review.