Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Sergio Cruz Portillo Valdiviezo, a Honduran citizen who entered the United States in 2021, was arrested without a warrant while traveling to work in June 2026. Immigration authorities served a warrant four days later and placed him in removal proceedings. After he accepted voluntary departure while unrepresented and then appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, he sought federal habeas relief from detention.
The parties agreed that 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), the discretionary detention provision for people awaiting a removal decision, governed his custody. They disagreed over the remedy. Cruz Portillo Valdiviezo argued that the initially warrantless arrest required his release; the government did not oppose an individualized bond hearing but resisted release.
The Court’s Holding
Judge Janis L. Sammartino granted the petition only in part and ordered an individualized bond hearing within 14 days. The court concluded that a hearing, rather than outright release, was the appropriate response to the claimed arrest defect. At the hearing, detention could not be justified as mandatory under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2); the petitioner would bear the burden of showing by a preponderance of the evidence that he was neither dangerous nor a flight risk.
The court followed other Southern District decisions reasoning that immigration officials had made arrests under then-controlling agency precedent treating the individuals as subject to mandatory detention. The Ninth Circuit later held in Rodriguez Vazquez v. Bostock that noncitizens apprehended in the interior are governed by § 1226, but that appellate ruling came after this petitioner’s arrest. The district court declined to retroactively treat the government’s reliance on the earlier agency rule as requiring automatic release.
A warrant served four days after the arrest did not change the remedy. Nor did the statutes and regulations governing warrantless immigration arrests persuade the court that release was necessary. The court closed the habeas case but required the parties to report the bond-hearing outcome.
Key Takeaways
- For this pre-Rodriguez Vazquez interior arrest, the court treated § 1226(a) as the governing detention authority but stopped short of ordering release.
- The remedy for the alleged warrant and timing violations was a prompt individualized bond hearing.
- The immigration judge may not deny bond on the theory that § 1225(b)(2) makes detention mandatory.
- The detainee bears the burden, under the authority applied by this court, of proving that he is not dangerous and is not a flight risk.
- The court expressly left open how the Ninth Circuit’s July 2026 decision affects arrests occurring after that decision.
Why It Matters
The order illustrates a remedial divide in the wave of California immigration-detention cases: establishing that § 1226 governs does not necessarily produce immediate release. Counsel must separately address what remedy follows from an unlawful or procedurally defective arrest and who bears the burden at any resulting hearing.
The timing of an arrest may also matter. This court relied heavily on the fact that the arrest preceded the Ninth Circuit’s change in controlling law, so practitioners handling later arrests should not assume the same analysis will apply.