Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Nancy Correa Reyes entered the United States in May 2024 with her three minor children. Within days, the Department of Homeland Security paroled the family after an asylum officer found that Correa Reyes had a credible fear of persecution, and her parole was set to run through mid-2025. In April 2025, she applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture, listing her children as derivative applicants.
Correa Reyes arrived slightly late to her individual immigration court hearing in September 2025. The immigration judge ordered the family removed in absentia and deemed their applications abandoned. In March 2026, Correa Reyes moved to reopen the removal order, but the immigration judge denied her fee waiver and marked the motion to reopen as moot. She appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals and sought an emergency stay of removal — both of which remain pending. In the meantime, ICE placed her on an Order of Supervision (Form I-220B) requiring periodic check-ins, with which she complied.
On September 29, 2026, Correa Reyes reported for a scheduled supervision check-in at ICE’s San Francisco office. She was arrested on the spot, along with her three children, and taken into custody. That same day, she and her children filed a habeas corpus petition and an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) in federal court, seeking immediate release, a bar on re-detention without advance notice and a hearing, and a bar on transferring the family out of the district. ICE’s declaration confirmed it had revoked her release status, had a travel document ready, and intended to remove her within days.
The Court’s Holding
U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley granted the TRO, applying the standard four-factor preliminary-injunction test from Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council: likelihood of success on the merits, likelihood of irreparable harm, the balance of equities, and the public interest (the latter two merge when the government is the opposing party).
On the merits, the court found the family likely to succeed on their claim that re-detaining them without a bond hearing before an immigration judge violated procedural due process under the Fifth Amendment, applying the balancing framework from Mathews v. Eldridge and following a recent Northern District of California decision reaching the same conclusion on similar facts. The government’s own earlier decisions — first paroling the family, then placing them under supervised release rather than detention — reflected a determination that they posed neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. Because nothing in the record showed that assessment had changed, detaining the family again without any new hearing was likely unconstitutional.
The court treated the likely constitutional violation as automatically establishing irreparable harm, and found the balance of equities and public interest favored release: the government faced, at most, a short delay in detaining the family if it later proved detention was warranted, while the family faced ongoing unlawful confinement. The court ordered ICE to release the family immediately; enjoined ICE from re-detaining them without notice and a pre-deprivation hearing before a neutral decisionmaker; barred their transfer out of the district or removal from the United States while the case proceeds; required a status report confirming release by the next morning; and set a show-cause hearing for October 13, 2026, with briefing deadlines leading up to it. The court also exercised its discretion to waive the usual security bond under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c).
Key Takeaways
- The court ordered ICE to immediately release a mother and her three children who were arrested during what had been a routine immigration supervision check-in.
- Applying the Winter four-factor test, the court found a likely Fifth Amendment procedural due process violation because the family was detained without a bond hearing before an immigration judge.
- A person’s prior history of parole and compliant supervised release, absent new evidence of flight risk or danger, weighs heavily against re-detention without a hearing.
- Courts treat the deprivation of constitutional rights as inherently irreparable harm, and in this context waived the usual Rule 65(c) bond requirement against the government.
- The order is temporary, running only through an October 13, 2026 show-cause hearing — it preserves the status quo while the underlying habeas petition is litigated, rather than permanently resolving it.
Why It Matters
This order is part of a recurring pattern in which immigrants who were previously granted parole or supervised release — and who complied with reporting requirements — are arrested when they show up for routine check-ins. Federal district courts, including several in the Northern District of California, have increasingly stepped in through emergency TRO motions to require a bond hearing before re-detention, reasoning that a prior parole or supervision grant carries weight that cannot be ignored without some new showing of risk.
For practitioners, the decision is a useful template for emergency habeas and TRO practice in detention cases: it walks through how courts apply the Winter factors to ICE custody decisions, treats constitutional deprivation as automatically satisfying the irreparable-harm prong, and shows how courts balance the government’s administrative interests against the human cost of family detention. Because the order is temporary and sets up a further show-cause hearing, it also illustrates how these cases typically unfold — fast emergency relief followed by fuller briefing on the underlying habeas claims.