Jewenti Jewenti, a native and citizen of India, entered the United States on or about November 7, 2022, was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol, and was released on recognizance. He had lived in Indiana for over three years when ICE arrested him during a traffic stop on December 10, 2025, and transferred him to the Campbell County Detention Center in Newport, Kentucky, where he was held without bond. He filed a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 on March 18, 2026.
The government argued that Jewenti, as an alien who was never lawfully admitted, qualifies as an applicant for admission under § 1225(a)(1) and is therefore subject to mandatory detention under § 1225(b)(2)(A) with no right to a bond hearing. Chief Judge David L. Bunning of the Eastern District of Kentucky rejected that reading, holding that § 1225(b)(2)(A) requires not only that a noncitizen be an applicant for admission but also that the person be actively seeking admission — a present-tense act that a person who has resided in the country for years cannot be said to be performing.
The court held that § 1226(a), which governs the apprehension and detention of aliens already present in the United States and expressly permits bond hearings, is the controlling statute. The court found the government's contrary position particularly difficult to square with two features of the record: DHS's own November 10, 2022 Notice to Appear checked the box for alien present in the United States who has not been admitted or paroled rather than arriving alien, and when ICE re-detained Jewenti in December 2025 it served him with an I-200 arrest warrant issued pursuant to § 1226. The court held that the government's post hoc recharacterization of that detention as governed by § 1225 was impermissible, citing Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California for the principle that an agency must defend its actions based on the reasons it gave when it acted.
The court also relied on the Laken Riley Act, enacted in January 2025, which added a mandatory-detention requirement to § 1226(c) for noncitizens who are both inadmissible on certain grounds and charged with, arrested for, convicted of, or admitting to committing specified crimes. If § 1225(b)(2) already mandated detention of every unadmitted alien regardless of how long they had been in the country, the court reasoned, Congress would have had no reason to amend § 1226 at all, and the new legislation would be superfluous.
On due process, the court applied the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test and held that all three factors favored Jewenti. The court ordered that the government must either release Jewenti immediately or provide him with a constitutionally adequate bond hearing under § 1226(a) within seven days, with the government bearing the burden of proving dangerousness or flight risk. A status report is due April 29, 2026.
The court acknowledged that the Fifth and Eighth Circuits have reached the opposite conclusion, but declined to follow those decisions as non-binding persuasive authority. The Seventh Circuit has sided with the district court's reading. The Sixth Circuit heard oral argument on March 18, 2026, in Lopez-Campos v. Raycraft, Case No. 25-1965, on an expedited schedule, and its decision will be authoritative for courts in this district.