Angel v. Mullin: No Automatic Constitutional Right to a Bond Hearing Under § 1225(b)(2)(A)

1. Introduction

In Angel v. Mullin, the en banc Fifth Circuit held that three long-term residents who had entered the United States without inspection or lawful admission were not constitutionally entitled to individualized bond hearings before being detained under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) during removal proceedings. The court also rejected an automatic hearing deadline based on elapsed detention, declaring that continued detention remains constitutionally permissible while removal is a viable prospect, subject to qualifications concerning punitive detention and confinement that no longer serves an immigration purpose.

The consolidated cases involved Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez, Alejandro Villegas Angel, and Miguel Angel Gomez Alvarado. The respondents were federal immigration agencies and officials, including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and officials responsible for immigration enforcement and adjudication.

The central dispute was constitutional rather than statutory. Under the Fifth Circuit’s earlier decision in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, the petitioners were “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention despite having lived in the country for many years. They accepted that classification in these appeals but argued that the Fifth Amendment required an opportunity to establish that they were neither dangerous nor likely to flee.

The decision’s importance lies in its extension of admission-related constitutional principles to established residents apprehended in the interior. The majority treated lawful admission as the controlling distinction. The dissenters regarded actual residence, physical liberty, and the continuing justification for confinement as constitutionally indispensable considerations that statutory terminology could not displace.

2. Background and Procedural History

The district courts ordered release and prohibited renewed detention without bond hearings addressing dangerousness and flight risk. They applied the procedural due process balancing framework of Mathews v. Eldridge, emphasizing physical liberty and the perceived value of individualized assessment.

A divided appellate panel affirmed. Its majority announced that a hearing must occur within, at most, ninety days of confinement. Although two petitioners had obtained district court relief before that period expired, the panel sustained the orders because continued detention would have exceeded its proposed deadline by the time of appellate decision.

The Fifth Circuit ordered rehearing en banc on its own initiative, stayed the district court judgments, and heard expedited argument. The en banc court reversed the judgments and vacated the habeas orders. It directed that the mandate issue immediately.

Judge Cory T. Wilson authored the majority opinion. Judges James C. Ho and Andrew S. Oldham wrote separate concurrences. Judge Priscilla Richman concurred only in the judgment. Judges Leslie H. Southwick, Catharina Haynes, Dana M. Douglas, and Stephen A. Higginson wrote dissents, with several judges joining more than one dissent.

3. The Statutory Framework

A. Admission, not simply physical entry

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996—usually called IIRIRA—reorganized immigration procedures around lawful “admission.” Section 1101(a)(13)(A) defines admission as lawful entry following inspection and authorization by an immigration officer.

Under § 1225(a)(1), a person present in the United States who has not been admitted is deemed an “applicant for admission.” In Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, 166 F.4th 494 (5th Cir. 2026), the Fifth Circuit held that this category includes people apprehended in the interior after years of residence. That decision supplied the statutory premise here; the new opinion principally addressed its constitutional consequences.

B. Mandatory and discretionary detention

• Section 1225(b)(2)(A): Requires detention for removal proceedings when an applicant for admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to admission. It does not provide individualized bond hearings.
• Section 1226(a): Provides discretionary detention authority, with possible release on bond or parole.
• Section 1226(c): Requires detention of specified categories of noncitizens, including certain people with criminal convictions.
• Section 1231(a): Governs detention associated with an existing removal order and formed the statutory setting of Zadvydas v. Davis.

The distinction between §§ 1225 and 1226 matters because it determines whether the ordinary statutory bond process is available. Neither eligibility for a bond hearing nor a hearing itself guarantees release.

C. The 2025 administrative change

For decades after IIRIRA, immigration authorities generally treated people apprehended in the interior as eligible for discretionary detention and possible bond under § 1226(a). In July 2025, DHS changed its position, interpreting § 1225(b)(2)(A) to require detention of unadmitted applicants wherever apprehended. The Board of Immigration Appeals adopted that interpretation in In re Yajure Hurtado, 29 I. & N. Dec. 216 (B.I.A. 2025).

The majority considered this interpretation faithful to the statutory text. The dissenters regarded it as a departure from the structure and longstanding administration of the detention scheme. Discretionary immigration parole remained a possible avenue of release, but it was not equivalent to an entitlement to a bond hearing.

4. Summary of the Court’s Decision

The majority supplied several overlapping grounds for denying relief:

1. Admission-related process: Because the petitioners had never been lawfully admitted, they were not entitled to additional admission-related procedures beyond those Congress provided.
2. Statutory relevance: Dangerousness and flight risk are not predicates for detention under § 1225(b)(2)(A). Procedural due process therefore did not require hearings to establish those facts.
3. Substantive due process: The asserted right, carefully defined as freedom from custody pending removal proceedings, was not a historically established fundamental right. Mandatory detention satisfied rational-basis review.
4. Duration on this record: The petitioners’ actual detention periods—approximately three weeks, two months, and three months, as characterized by the court—did not warrant constitutional relief.
5. No automatic deadline: Continued or renewed detention does not violate due process merely because a fixed period has elapsed, so long as removal remains viable and detention retains its legitimate immigration function.

The court did not hold that every immigration detention is immune from habeas review. It expressly preserved possible challenges involving facts relevant to statutory detention eligibility, detention serving an improper purpose, removal that is no longer realistically attainable, and other legal grounds not presented.

5. Analysis of the Principal Precedents and Legal Reasoning

A. Statutory foundations: Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi and Jennings v. Rodriguez

Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi was indispensable because it established that the petitioners fell within § 1225 despite their lengthy interior residence. The majority declined invitations to reconsider that interpretation. The Eighth Circuit’s Avila v. Bondi, 170 F.4th 1128 (8th Cir. 2026), supported the same statutory position.

Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. 281 (2018), supplied a different but related proposition: § 1225 cannot plausibly be interpreted to contain periodic bond hearings or a judicially supplied detention deadline. The majority used it to distinguish statutory commands from procedures courts might consider desirable.

The distinction is crucial: Jennings v. Rodriguez rejected a particular statutory interpretation; it did not resolve the constitutional question presented here. The dissenters emphasized that its constitutional remand, together with Nielsen v. Preap, left room for constitutional challenges to mandatory detention. The Fifth Circuit’s present decision supplied its own constitutional answer rather than merely implementing a constitutional holding already announced in Jennings v. Rodriguez.

The majority also invoked Martinez v. Att'y Gen. and Torres v. Barr to explain IIRIRA’s policy of reducing advantages enjoyed by people who bypassed inspection compared with those who presented themselves at ports of entry. These authorities supported the statutory history; they did not independently decide whether long-term interior residents must receive constitutional custody review.

B. The governing habeas standard

Under Pack v. Yusuff, the court reviewed the grants of habeas relief de novo: it independently assessed the legal conclusions rather than deferring to the district courts. Brecht v. Abrahamson described habeas as an extraordinary safeguard against fundamentally unlawful custody, while Lowery v. Collins supported the requirement to establish a constitutional violation.

The statutory writ under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 reaches custody violating the Constitution, federal laws, or treaties. Here, because the petitioners accepted the governing statutory classification, the dispositive question was whether the Constitution nevertheless prohibited their detention without individualized hearings.

C. Admission status and the reach of DHS v. Thuraissigiam

DHS v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. 103 (2020), was central to the majority’s first ground. It recognized Congress’s broad authority to decide whom to admit and to prescribe admission procedures. The Supreme Court treated a person apprehended twenty-five yards beyond the border shortly after crossing as standing at the threshold of entry.

The majority read that decision as making lawful admission, rather than physical presence, decisive for the process at issue. Because the petitioners remained applicants for admission under federal law, their years of residence did not generate a constitutional entitlement to the requested bond hearings.

The historical foundation was Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U.S. 651 (1892), which stated that authorized executive decisions constitute due process for the class of arriving foreigners it described. Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S. 21 (1982), similarly distinguished initial admission from the constitutional position of a person admitted into the country who develops the ties accompanying permanent residence.

Other supporting authorities included:

• Mathews v. Diaz: Noncitizens receive Fifth Amendment protection, but Congress may adopt immigration rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens.
• Fiallo v. Bell, quoting Oceanic Navigation Co. v. Stranahan: Congressional authority over admission is exceptionally broad.
• Trump v. Hawaii: Admission and exclusion implicate fundamental sovereign authority largely entrusted to the political branches.
• Vartelas v. Holder: IIRIRA made admission a central statutory concept.
• Johnson v. Eisentrager and Fong Yue Ting v. United States: Supported the majority’s broader account of differing constitutional positions and sovereign removal authority.

The disputed doctrinal step: None of those propositions automatically answers whether a person residing in the interior for fourteen or twenty-two years is constitutionally equivalent, for custody purposes, to a newly arriving applicant. The majority’s extension of threshold reasoning to these residents is a major feature of the precedent.

Judge Southwick read DHS v. Thuraissigiam more narrowly. Its emphasis on proximity to the border and recent entry, he argued, preserved rather than eliminated the distinction between arriving applicants and established residents. He also stressed that the language quoted from Nishimura Ekiu v. United States expressly referred to people who had not acquired domicile or residence.

For the dissenters, Yamataya v. Fisher, Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezei, and Plyler v. Doe confirmed that unlawful presence does not remove established residents from constitutional protection. Hohn v. United States supported their insistence that existing Supreme Court precedent remains binding until the Supreme Court revisits it.

The disagreement was therefore not whether the Fifth Amendment applies—the majority expressly accepted that it does—but whether its application supplies custody protections independent of the procedures Congress selected.

D. Procedural due process: Mathews v. Eldridge and statutory relevance

Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), ordinarily balances:

1. The affected private interest;
2. The risk of erroneous deprivation and the likely value of additional safeguards; and
3. The governmental interest and burdens of additional procedures.

The district courts regarded physical liberty as weighty and bond hearings as a useful protection against unnecessary confinement. The majority answered that the proposed hearings would not reduce legally relevant error. Under § 1225(b)(2)(A), detention does not depend on proving dangerousness or flight risk.

The decisive authority was Conn. Dep't of Pub. Safety v. Doe, 538 U.S. 1 (2003). There, registration depended on a qualifying conviction, not current dangerousness. A hearing on dangerousness therefore would not establish a fact material to the statutory obligation.

The majority applied that principle directly: because the petitioners conceded the classification triggering detention, hearings on their suitability for release would not correct an error in applying the statute. Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co. supplied the general description of procedural due process, and City of Los Angeles v. David confirmed the ordinary role of the Mathews v. Eldridge factors.

This reasoning establishes an important procedural distinction. A hearing addressing whether the government has correctly identified a statutory detainee is different from a hearing asking whether a correctly classified detainee should nevertheless be released. The court rejected the latter demand while expressly leaving room for the former kind of challenge.

The dissent’s objection: statutory silence cannot establish constitutional sufficiency

Judge Southwick relied on Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532 (1985), which separates the existence of a protected interest from the procedures a legislature provides for taking it away. Once the Constitution protects the interest, the statute cannot alone determine the adequacy of the process.

He also distinguished Conn. Dep't of Pub. Safety v. Doe: the registrant there expressly disclaimed a substantive due process challenge. These petitioners, by contrast, challenged whether the Constitution permits their confinement without justification beyond unadmitted status. A legislature cannot defeat that challenge simply by declaring the constitutionally important facts irrelevant.

The competing approaches turn on the validity of the underlying detention rule. If categorical detention is constitutionally permissible, a hearing on irrelevant exceptions adds nothing. If individual justification becomes constitutionally necessary, statutory silence is the problem rather than the answer.

E. Substantive due process: defining the asserted liberty

The majority next treated the challenge as substantive because it questioned the fit between a statutory classification and its purpose. Michael H. v. Gerald D. supplied that distinction. In a footnote, the court also invoked Freedom Path, Inc. v. I.R.S. to characterize the argument as effectively facial: the petitioners’ proposed requirement would apply across the statutory category rather than turn on a uniquely unconstitutional application.

The majority rejected “freedom from physical restraint” as too abstract a description. Relying on Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997), and Dep't of State v. Muñoz, 602 U.S. 899 (2024), it described the claimed right more narrowly as freedom from custody pending removal proceedings.

Under Washington v. Glucksberg, an asserted unenumerated fundamental right requires careful definition and grounding in the nation’s history and traditions. The court found no such tradition here, emphasizing the absence of statutory immigration bail before 1907 and later laws requiring detention during admissibility inquiries. Occasional discretionary release did not, in its view, establish a constitutional entitlement.

Dep't of State v. Muñoz and Kerry v. Din supported the distinction between a fundamental entitlement and legislative accommodation. Castellano v. Strong supplied the majority’s formulation that continued residence cannot create a universal entitlement to remain through something analogous to adverse possession.

Having rejected a fundamental right as narrowly defined, the majority applied rational-basis review. Mandatory custody was rationally connected to ensuring availability for removal. Under Mansell v. Mansell, Congress did not have to compile a particular legislative evidentiary record to defend its policy choice.

The dissent’s competing starting point

Judge Southwick argued that no new right needed recognition. The Supreme Court had already identified freedom from bodily restraint as a core liberty. His principal authorities were:

• Foucha v. Louisiana: Physical liberty is central to due process, and civil confinement requires constitutionally sufficient grounds.
• Kansas v. Hendricks: Civil commitment requires a sufficiently confined justification, including the relevant combination of dangerousness and an additional qualifying condition.
• Addington v. Texas: Civil commitment is a substantial deprivation requiring due process protection.
• United States v. Salerno: Preventive detention was sustained within a carefully limited scheme containing substantial procedural protections.
• Jackson v. Indiana: The nature and duration of commitment must reasonably relate to its purpose.
• Hamdi v. Rumsfeld: Even weighty governmental detention interests do not eliminate the need to consider protected physical liberty.

Ingraham v. Wright supported the historical understanding of liberty; Troxel v. Granville illustrated that courts ordinarily apply established fundamental-right precedents without restarting the historical inquiry. Judge Southwick also quoted Justice Thomas’s dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges for its account of liberty as freedom of movement. That quotation was a historical argument, not a controlling holding of that case.

The methodological disagreement drives the outcome. The majority asked whether history establishes a specific right to release during removal proceedings. The dissent asked whether the government sufficiently justified depriving people of an already established liberty.

F. Categorical detention: Demore v. Kim, Carlson v. Landon, and Reno v. Flores

Demore v. Kim, 538 U.S. 510 (2003), upheld mandatory detention of specified criminal noncitizens during removal proceedings. The majority treated it as strong authority that the Constitution does not invariably demand individualized dangerousness or flight-risk findings.

Carlson v. Landon, 342 U.S. 524 (1952), similarly supported detention without the individualized findings sought here. Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292 (1993), rejected a demand for fully individualized custody determinations in its particular juvenile immigration setting.

The majority drew a general principle: Congress may rely on categories rather than require individualized release assessments in every case.

The dissenters accepted that categorical detention can be valid but disputed the generalization. Demore v. Kim concerned a defined criminal category and relied on evidence of flight and recidivism, together with the comparatively brief detention described there. Carlson v. Landon concerned a particular security-related category and expressly reserved unusual delay. Reno v. Flores involved juveniles in licensed custodial programs seeking release to different custodians, rather than adults contesting confinement in barred cells.

Accordingly, these decisions supplied competing lessons: the majority emphasized permission to legislate categorically; the dissent emphasized the factual and temporal limits that made the particular categories constitutionally defensible.

G. Duration: distinguishing Zadvydas v. Davis

Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), interpreted post-removal-order detention authority to avoid the serious constitutional problem of potentially permanent confinement when removal could not realistically be accomplished.

The majority distinguished it on three grounds:

1. It concerned § 1231 rather than detention pending proceedings under § 1225.
2. The individuals had previously been admitted.
3. Removal was no longer practically attainable, weakening the connection between confinement and its immigration purpose.

The majority also rejected importing the six-month presumption discussed in Zadvydas v. Davis into § 1225. That presumption is not a universal detention cap or an automatic entitlement to release.

Banyee v. Garland, 115 F.4th 928 (8th Cir. 2024), supported continued detention while deportation remained possible, even after more than a year. Herrera Estrada v. Thompson supplied additional support for distinguishing the constitutional position of applicants for admission.

Section IV went beyond the petitioners’ short detention periods. It announced that detention with a definite endpoint—removal or release—does not require a bond hearing simply because proceedings continue, provided removal remains viable. The same principle permits renewed detention of someone previously released.

Nevertheless, the court preserved questions concerning excessive delay that defeats detention’s immigration purpose, proceedings used as a façade for incarceration, punitive detention, and removal reduced to a remote possibility. It relied partly on Justice Kennedy’s concurrence in Demore v. Kim for those qualifications.

Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (1896), reinforced the distinction between permissible custody incidental to expulsion and criminal punishment, such as imprisonment at hard labor, which requires constitutional criminal-process protections.

Finally, the statement in Jennings v. Rodriguez that detention under § 1225 ends when the relevant proceedings end concerns that statutory authority. It does not mean that every form of immigration custody necessarily ends at the same moment; another statute may govern a subsequent detention phase.

6. The Separate Opinions

A. Judge Ho: sovereignty and political responsibility

Judge Ho framed the dispute principally around national sovereignty and the political branches’ authority to exclude and remove noncitizens. He relied on Wong Wing v. United States, Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezei, and United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams.

He argued that the petitioners could end confinement by departing and that courts should not transform unlawful entry or prolonged residence into a right to release within the United States. He also invoked war-power reasoning and executive declarations concerning the southern border. Those additional observations were not adopted as an independent basis of the majority’s holding.

His references to Villarreal v. City of Laredo, Gonzalez v. Trevino, and Mayfield v. Butler Snow, L.L.P. contrasted perceived approaches to liberty in unrelated settings. His analogy to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org. emphasized democratic decision-making. These references formed part of his institutional and rhetorical argument, not controlling immigration-detention doctrine.

The concurrence’s characterization of the petitions as effectively seeking unlawful entry should be distinguished from the relief actually requested: an opportunity to seek release while removal proceedings continued, not a judgment establishing lawful admission.

B. Judge Oldham: habeas as a mechanism, not a source of substantive rights

Judge Oldham’s extensive concurrence separated the privilege of seeking habeas review from the substantive law determining whether detention is lawful. In his account, habeas supplies a neutral judicial decision-maker; it does not itself establish an entitlement to bail or release.

He traced that distinction through English history, including Darnel's Case and Trial of John Lilburn, and American authorities including Ex parte Bollman, Ex parte Milligan, and Ex parte Quirin. His principal point was that access to a court and success in that court are separate matters.

The historical discussion of conditional pardons and banishment relied on authorities such as Queen v. Batcheldor, People v. Potter, State v. Smith, and Schick v. Reed. The Alien Friends Act and Alien Enemies Act supported his account of early legislative control over noncitizens.

Two distinctions matter when evaluating this concurrence. First, proving that habeas is procedural does not independently resolve which constitutional substantive protections govern custody. Second, historical criminal pardons, banishment, and emergency alien legislation do not automatically determine the rules for modern civil removal detention. The judges disagreed about the significance of those analogies and the weight of politically contested historical enactments.

Judge Oldham also addressed A.A.R.P. v. Trump and Trump v. J.G.G., which required a meaningful opportunity to seek habeas relief before removal in their settings. He read them as protecting access to review without establishing entitlement to release. His broader discussion of jurisdictional restrictions on reviewing removal orders must likewise be distinguished from the majority’s decision concerning the legality of detention.

C. Judge Richman: a narrower basis for concurrence

Judge Richman agreed that the petitioners were statutory applicants for admission and were not entitled to the requested pre-detention hearings when detained under § 1225. She emphasized that they had not challenged the duration of their detention.

She did not decide whether authorities might alternatively proceed under § 1226 or what hearing obligations would follow. Her narrower approach highlights the gap between deciding these cases and announcing a general rule governing much longer future confinement.

D. Judge Southwick: liberty requires continuing justification

Judge Southwick’s principal dissent accepted that detention is a legitimate component of removal. It rejected the proposition that the existence of ongoing proceedings supplies sufficient justification for however long confinement lasts.

His proposed framework required a permissible regulatory purpose, a connection between confinement and that purpose, and a reasonable relationship between duration and purpose. Once proceedings become unreasonably delayed, individual justification would become necessary.

He did not renew a definite numerical deadline in the en banc dissent. He acknowledged both the absence of a direct duration challenge and the short confinement of two petitioners. His disagreement therefore focused particularly on the majority’s broader rule for future detention.

He also rejected the “keys to confinement” argument. Departure may require abandoning pending relief and can carry serious immigration consequences. Shillitani v. United States and Turner v. Rogers illustrated that even a person who can secure release by satisfying a condition retains a protected liberty interest.

Mills v. Rogers supported his distinction between the substantive conditions permitting deprivation and the procedures for determining whether those conditions exist. Carey v. Piphus supplied his concluding emphasis on preventing mistaken or unjustified deprivations.

E. Judge Haynes: an expressly limited approach

Judge Haynes would confine enhanced due process protection to people resembling these petitioners: residents of more than ten years, without criminal history, and with close American relatives. Her dissent offered a narrower, circumstance-sensitive alternative rather than a universal rule for every person detained under § 1225.

F. Judge Douglas: both substantive protection and disputed history

Judge Douglas expressly recognized a substantive due process objection to unreasonably prolonged interior detention without a hearing. Unlike the majority, she considered freedom from arbitrary interior confinement deeply rooted in national history.

She challenged the inference drawn from the absence of statutory bail provisions before 1907, emphasizing that statutory silence does not establish a historical practice of widespread, bondless interior detention. Her reliance on historical scholarship directly opposed Judge Oldham’s approach.

She also invoked Wash. State Grange v. Wash. State Republican Party to question the breadth of the court’s constitutional ruling where these petitioners had not challenged duration. United States v. King supported her distinction between exceptional border powers and ordinary interior enforcement.

G. Judge Higginson: resolve the statute before expanding constitutional doctrine

Judge Higginson would reconsider Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi and apply § 1226 to interior arrests. His preferred route was constitutional avoidance: where a statute reasonably permits more than one reading, select a construction that avoids serious constitutional difficulties.

Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Fla. Gulf Coast Bldg. & Constr. Trades Council supplied the classic avoidance principle. The majority responded through Jennings v. Rodriguez and Clark v. Martinez: avoidance operates only when ordinary interpretation leaves more than one plausible construction. The judges thus disagreed first about ambiguity, not merely about constitutional risk.

Judge Higginson also cited Learning Res., Inc. v. Trump for the significance of an unprecedented claim of executive statutory authority, and Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez and Blanche v. Lau for descriptions of the detention framework consistent with his position.

His institutional concern was that removing ordinary immigration bond hearings shifts disputes into federal habeas proceedings. Immigration adjudicators are executive-branch officials, not Article III judges. He relied on Matter of Garcia and Matter of Anselmo to explain their obligations to follow administrative and geographically controlling appellate precedent. His analysis connected statutory interpretation to administrative workload, judicial oversight, and interbranch friction.

7. The Circuit Conflict

The supplied opinion describes a substantial conflict among the circuits. Its statutory and constitutional dimensions should not be conflated.

As reported in the opinion, the Supreme Court had granted review in Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha. That grant was not a merits decision. A subsequent resolution of the statutory issue could substantially reduce the practical reach of this constitutional controversy without necessarily deciding every due process question.

8. Potential Impact and Unresolved Questions

A. Consequences for detention litigation

Within the Fifth Circuit, applicants concededly detained under § 1225(b)(2)(A) cannot obtain bond hearings merely by emphasizing lengthy residence, family ties, lack of dangerousness, or low flight risk. Those facts do not independently defeat the categorical detention rule adopted here.

Nor does the passage of ninety days automatically trigger a constitutional hearing. The vacated panel decision supplies no controlling deadline, and the en banc court rejected importing a six-month rule from post-order detention law.

B. What remains open

• Incorrect classification: A detainee may dispute facts relevant to whether the statutory detention authority applies.
• Loss of immigration purpose: Detention may present different questions if proceedings become a façade for incarceration or removal ceases to be realistically attainable.
• Punishment: Civil immigration custody cannot simply become criminal punishment without the required protections.
• Other legal claims: The court did not resolve every possible statutory or constitutional ground for habeas relief.

The opinion leaves an important boundary uncertain: how much delay, and what evidence of governmental responsibility or practical impossibility, would demonstrate that confinement no longer serves its legitimate purpose? Its broad duration rule makes that showing more consequential while providing no numerical benchmark.

C. Renewed detention and previously granted release

The majority expressly included renewed detention of previously released applicants within its viability-based rule. Prior release therefore does not itself create a continuing constitutional entitlement to remain free under this decision. That proposition does not eliminate challenges resting on a distinct legal restriction or materially different facts.

D. Geographic and institutional consequences

The described circuit conflict makes detention location consequential: different appellate rules may determine whether ordinary administrative bond procedures are available. Judge Higginson linked that divergence to transfers and increased habeas filings in Texas and neighboring detention systems.

More broadly, the opinion shifts the practical inquiry from whether an individual needs confinement to whether Congress validly authorized categorical detention and whether removal remains viable. It correspondingly narrows the role of individualized judicial custody review.

E. The broader constitutional significance

The decision’s deepest implication is methodological. It treats admission status as powerful enough to shape both the procedures available and the definition of the liberty claimed. The dissenters instead treat physical liberty as an independent constitutional baseline against which immigration legislation must be measured.

Neither approach denies congressional power to remove noncitizens. Their disagreement concerns how closely courts must examine the confinement used while that power is exercised.

9. Complex Concepts Simplified

Applicant for admission

A statutory category that, under the Fifth Circuit’s interpretation, includes certain people already living in the country who were never lawfully admitted. It does not necessarily mean someone physically waiting at a border checkpoint.

Procedural due process

The rules government must follow before depriving someone of a protected interest—for example, notice, a hearing, or an opportunity to challenge an important factual determination.

Substantive due process

Limits on what government may do, even when it follows proper procedures. Here, the dispute was whether unadmitted status alone sufficiently justifies the challenged confinement.

Bond hearing

A proceeding considering conditional release from custody. Receiving a hearing is not the same as receiving release or lawful immigration status.

Immigration parole

A separate discretionary release mechanism. It is not equivalent to admission or an ordinary bond-hearing entitlement.

Plenary power

The unusually broad authority of the political branches over immigration. The dispute concerns its constitutional limits, not whether that authority exists.

Entry fiction

The doctrine treating certain people physically present in United States territory as remaining at the threshold of entry. Its relationship to long-established interior residence divided the judges.

Habeas corpus

A judicial mechanism for testing the legality of custody. Access to that mechanism does not automatically establish a right to release.

Rational-basis review

A deferential test asking whether a law is rationally connected to a legitimate governmental interest.

Facial and as-applied challenges

A facial challenge attacks the governing legal rule broadly; an as-applied challenge focuses on its operation in particular circumstances.

Constitutional avoidance

Choosing a reasonably available statutory interpretation that avoids serious constitutional problems. It does not authorize rewriting an unambiguous statute.

Indefinite detention

A contested description here. The majority emphasized a legally defined endpoint and viable removal; the dissent emphasized that a nominal endpoint may still permit an unreasonably long and practically uncertain confinement.

10. Conclusion

Angel v. Mullin establishes that unadmitted applicants detained under § 1225(b)(2)(A) have no automatic constitutional entitlement to individualized dangerousness or flight-risk hearings, and no hearing right triggered solely by a fixed period of detention.

Its broader rule permits continued or renewed custody while removal remains viable, but preserves challenges where statutory authority is misapplied or confinement loses its legitimate immigration purpose. The decision’s enduring significance lies in the unresolved constitutional divide between admission-based deference and independent judicial protection of physical liberty.