Karla Yaritzi Bibriesca Esteban entered the United States on June 9, 2023, after the government scheduled her an immigration appointment through a Customs and Border Patrol mobile application at the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry in El Paso, Texas. She was paroled into the country, placed in standard removal proceedings, and had never missed a required check-in. She is married to a U.S. citizen and was in the process of adjusting her status when ICE detained her at a Chicago immigration court hearing on June 5, 2025.
At that hearing, the government moved to shift Esteban from standard removal proceedings into expedited removal. An immigration judge granted the request, but the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed. Despite the BIA's reversal, Esteban remained in ICE custody at Grayson County Jail in the Western District of Kentucky, with the government relying on a July 8, 2025 DHS interim guidance document titled "Interim Guidance Regarding Detention Authority for Applicants for Admission" to justify holding her under 8 U.S.C. § 1225 rather than § 1226.
The court held that Section 1226, not Section 1225, governs Esteban's detention, incorporating its prior reasoning from Vicen v. Lewis and Patel v. Tindall — the latter of which held that an individual who has been paroled without first having been placed in expedited removal cannot later be designated for expedited removal. The government did not contest the underlying facts and acknowledged that the only relevant legal question was which statute applied.
Applying the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, the court held that all three factors favored Esteban. It found her private liberty interest substantial, the risk of erroneous deprivation high given that she had never missed an appointment and that the only material change in her circumstances was the government's changed interpretation of Sections 1225 and 1226, and the burden on the government from a routine bond hearing minimal. The government declined to address the due process merits directly, focusing only on the Section 1225 versus Section 1226 argument.
The government's response brief incorporated by reference arguments it filed in four pending Sixth Circuit appeals — Lopez-Campos v. Raycraft, Alvarez v. Noem, Contreras-Cervantes v. Raycraft, and Pizarro Reyes v. Raycraft — and conceded that the facts in those cases are similar to Esteban's. The court was not persuaded by the nonbinding district court decisions and a BIA ruling the government cited, noting that under Loper Bright Enterprises, courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.
The court ordered Esteban's immediate release, directed the government to provide her a bond hearing before a neutral immigration judge under Section 1226 and its supporting regulations, and required the government to certify compliance by filing on the docket by April 18, 2026.