Randhir Singh entered the United States in April 2023, was briefly detained at the border, released the same day with a Notice to Appear, and then lived and worked in the country without incident — and without a criminal record — until ICE arrested him at a truck stop in Pennsylvania on November 21, 2025. He was transferred to Pike County Correctional Facility on December 9, 2025, and held without any opportunity to seek bond. His habeas petition, filed January 2, 2026, argued that the government had no authority to hold him under the mandatory-detention regime of § 1225(b)(2), which applies to aliens seeking admission, and that § 1226(a)'s discretionary framework — which entitles detainees to an individualized bond hearing — governed instead.
Judge Joseph F. Saporito, Jr. of the Middle District of Pennsylvania agreed. The court held that § 1225(b)(2) requires, among other conditions, that the alien be seeking admission — language the court construed, consistent with other district courts in the circuit, to describe active and ongoing conduct of physically attempting to come into the United States, typically at a border or a port of entry. Singh, arrested in the interior after an extended period of residence, was not seeking admission in that sense. He was already here.
The court held that § 1226(a) — which the Supreme Court has recognized applies to aliens already present in the United States — therefore governs Singh's detention. Under § 1226(a) and Third Circuit precedent, the government must prove by clear and convincing evidence that Singh poses a danger to the community or is a flight risk if it seeks to continue holding him.
The government had argued that several INA jurisdiction-stripping provisions — § 1252(g), § 1252(b)(9), and § 1252(a)(2)(B)(ii) — barred the court from reaching the merits, but ultimately withdrew those arguments and conceded jurisdiction. The court agreed it had jurisdiction, noting that Singh's challenge to his continued detention without a bond hearing is a now-or-never claim, independent of and wholly collateral to the removal process, and not reviewable through a petition for review of a final removal order.
The court declined to reach Singh's alternative APA and Fifth Amendment due process arguments, granting relief solely on the statutory ground. The government has twenty-one days to provide Singh with an individualized bond hearing or release him.
The ruling aligns the Middle District of Pennsylvania with what the court described as the overwhelming majority of federal district courts to have addressed the question, and it reflects a growing body of district court authority holding that interior arrests of long-resident noncitizens fall under § 1226(a), not § 1225(b)(2) — a split that has yet to be definitively resolved at the circuit level.