BIA stripped immigration judges of bond authority, mandating detention without hearings in Matter of Yajure Hurtado

On September 5, 2025, the Board of Immigration Appeals — the appellate body within the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review — issued a precedential decision in Matter of Yajure Hurtado, 29 I&N Dec. 216. The Board held that noncitizens who entered the United States without inspection and are later placed in removal proceedings are "applicants for admission" under Section 235(b)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and are therefore subject to mandatory detention. Under the Board's reading, an immigration judge has no authority to conduct a bond hearing for such a person, regardless of how long they have lived in the country.

The decision reversed decades of practice under which longtime residents placed in removal proceedings could ask an immigration judge to release them on bond while their cases were adjudicated. Following the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement began applying it to detain thousands of people — including individuals who had resided in the United States for years — without any individualized hearing on whether their continued detention was justified.

Because a precedential BIA decision binds immigration judges nationwide, the ruling functioned as a categorical policy change removing a longstanding procedural safeguard. The elimination of bond hearings concentrates custody decisions in the enforcement agencies pursuing removal and denies detained noncitizens the opportunity to be heard before a neutral adjudicator, raising core due-process concerns that federal courts have since divided over.

Updates

2026-06-15 — Supreme Court granted certiorari in a related prolonged-detention case [4]

The Supreme Court agreed to hear Genalo v. Black, No. 25-886, taking up whether prolonged immigration detention without a bond hearing violates due process and, if so, which party bears the burden of justifying continued detention — questions closely tied to the categorical-detention reading advanced in Matter of Yajure Hurtado.

2026-07-03 — Fifth Circuit required bond hearings after prolonged detention [3]

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that noncitizens detained under the mandatory-detention provision are entitled to an individualized bond hearing after prolonged detention, setting a constitutional floor of roughly 90 days and rejecting the government's argument that such individuals may be held indefinitely without any custody review.