The petitioner, Simranjot Singh, a native and citizen of India, entered the United States without inspection near Calexico, California in April 2019. After an immigration judge found a positive credible fear, vacated the expedited-removal order, and placed him in section 240 removal proceedings, Singh was released on a $20,000 bond in July 2019. He remained free — enrolled in DHS's ISAP Electronic Monitoring Program with a GPS ankle monitor — while his removal case proceeded. An immigration judge in San Francisco denied his applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and Convention Against Torture protection in May 2021, and his appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals remained pending as of the date of the order.
The re-detention that triggered the habeas petition arose from a January 2026 encounter at the Blaine, Washington port of entry. Canadian border authorities took Singh into custody on January 11, 2026; his asylum claim was denied under the Safe Third Country Agreement and he was returned to the United States. DHS issued a Form I-200 Warrant of Arrest on January 12, 2026, cancelled his prior bond, and transferred him to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. Singh's own account, set out in his petition, was that he had been at the Blaine border crossing to drop off his girlfriend for departure in an Uber when officers of the Canadian Border Patrol approached the vehicle, questioned the occupants, and detained him.
Magistrate Judge Theresa L. Fricke first held that Singh is subject to discretionary detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), not mandatory detention under § 1225. The court noted that the only operative Notice to Appear charges Singh as removable under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i) based on his 2019 arrival, that the Form I-200 arrest warrant expressly invokes section 236 of the Immigration and Nationality Act — the statutory codification of § 1226 — and that the government issued no new NTA categorizing him as an applicant for admission subject to § 1225. The Form I-213 dated January 12, 2026 confirmed the point: it stated that Singh was being forwarded to Enforcement and Removal Operations not because he was deemed inadmissible but because, despite his pending BIA appeal, he lacked a future court date that would have permitted release under CBP guidelines.
Applying the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, the court held that all three factors favored Singh. His liberty interest was heightened because he had been free for over six years and had complied with all conditions of release — facts the government did not dispute. The risk of erroneous deprivation was high: there was no pre-deprivation notice, no neutral decisionmaker, no flight-risk or dangerousness assessment, and the government's own documents showed the re-detention was based solely on the absence of an upcoming court date. The government's interest in civil detention without a hearing, the court held, was low, and the administrative burden of providing a timely hearing was outweighed by the serious risk of erroneous deprivation and Singh's strong interest in continued liberty on bond.
The court ordered the government to release Singh within 24 hours under his most recent conditions of release — meaning the GPS ankle-monitor enrollment he was already subject to — and to file a declaration confirming the date and time of release within two days. The court denied without prejudice Singh's request for a permanent injunction barring re-detention without a pre-deprivation hearing, finding he had not adequately argued that re-detention was likely to recur without proper process. The request to enjoin GPS monitoring was denied outright, as the record showed Singh had been subject to that condition since his 2019 release. The court indicated it would entertain a post-judgment motion for attorney's fees.