'This omission is fatal': Judge tears into ICE for detaining man who cannot even be deported due to special visa

A federal judge in Florida ordered the Trump administration to immediately release a man being detained despite his "deferred action" status which makes him ineligible for deportation.

The five-page order offers an iteration of case law native to the second administration of President Donald Trump.

Such cases, which have quickly established precedent, largely involve district court judges shutting down controversial efforts to reshape how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) classifies certain immigrants in order to try to indefinitely detain them.

In the present case, the petitioner, Alejandro Osvaldo Ghysels Reales, won habeas corpus relief by convincing U.S. District Judge Kyle Dudek, who was appointed by Trump last year, that his detention is unlawful.

"When the government detains a noncitizen pending immigration proceedings, it must have a legitimate, non-punitive reason for doing so," Dudek begins in a tone that quickly becomes ominous for the government. "Typically, the reason is straightforward: the government detains a noncitizen to ensure he is available for removal. But that justification rests on a critical premise—that the government actually can remove him. Here, it cannot."

The court says "[t]he facts that matter are simple," though Reales has been subject to a final deportation order since 2010.

"For over a decade, he lived peacefully under an order of supervision," the order explains. "During that time, he took steps to regularize his status, applying for a U-1 nonimmigrant visa based on threats made against his daughter."

In 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) determined his U-visa petition was "bona fide," Dudek notes. A judge in a similar habeas case recently described the U-visa as "a type of temporary visa available to certain undocumented persons within the United States who cooperate with law enforcement."

In any event, Reales won a favorable determination.

"With that determination came a grant of deferred action status," Dudek goes on. "As the Eleventh Circuit has explained, deferred action status 'amounts to, in practical application, a reprieve for deportable aliens.' When a noncitizen holds deferred action status, '[n]o action (i.e., no deportation) will be taken.'"

Here, the court is referring to a 2012 appeals court ruling which created binding precedent on district courts in the Sunshine State.

But the Trump administration was either unconcerned or unaware of that precedent — and to date has not seen fit to respond to it.

"Despite this clear directive, [ICE agents] recently revoked Reales' order of supervision and placed him in a detention cell," the order continues. "He responded with this habeas petition, arguing that because his deferred action status prevents removal, his detention serves no legitimate purpose and therefore violates the Fifth Amendment. The Government's response? Crickets."

Instead, the government focused on the argument that ICE was, at least, entitled to six months' worth of immigrant detention authority under a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

"[The government] also insists that ICE has broad discretion to revoke an order of supervision whenever it deems appropriate," the court explains. "But the Government's 12-page opposition manages to completely ignore the elephant in the room: Reales' U-visa and his active deferred action status."

Dudek says such arguments do not work.

"This omission is fatal," the order goes on. "The Government cannot simply wave the banner of discretionary authority while turning a blind eye to an affirmative immigration benefit that USCIS itself granted."

The judge then outlines a scenario in which the government seeks to revoke Reales' deferred action status — noting that such a benefit is "the result of executive discretion and is revocable at any time."

The Trump administration tried to sidestep the issue instead. This move resulted in a withering characterization by the court.

From the order, at length:

But here, the Government has done no such thing. There is no indication in the record that USCIS or ICE has revoked Reales' deferred action status. There is not even a whisper of an intent to do so. The Government simply scooped up a man protected by an active grant of deferred action, locked him in a cell, and submitted a brief to this Court that pretends the protection does not exist. Wishing a legal obstacle away does not make it disappear.

The court lectures Department of Justice attorneys that immigrants "have a substantive due process right to be free of arbitrary confinement pending deportation proceedings," while repeatedly noting that Reales is not eligible for such proceedings. In another section of the order, Dudek accuses the DOJ of "offering a defense that inexplicably ignores the legal shield preventing his deportation."

"As mentioned, substantive due process requires immigration detention to bear a reasonable relationship to its purpose," the order concludes. "The only proffered purpose for detaining Reales is to remove him. Yet his unrevoked deferred action status legally forecloses that result. Given the Government's complete silence on this issue, the Court can only conclude that his detention is arbitrary and thus unlawful. The remedy for such an unlawful detention is immediate release."