On March 25, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued its decision in Herrera Avila v. Bondi, No. 25-3248 (8th Cir. Mar. 25, 2026), a ruling that significantly expands the federal government’s authority to detain undocumented immigrants without bond.
Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“CAT”) imposes a non-derogable obligation on States Parties: no signatory may return a person to a country where that person faces a substantial risk of torture.
Immigration appeals sometimes outlive the appellant’s physical presence in the United States. Yet Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) regulations include a “withdrawal-by-departure” rule: 8 C.F.R. § 1003.4 provides that a respondent’s “departure” after taking an appeal, but before a Board decision, “shall constitute a withdrawal of the appeal.”
In immigration law, the label attached to a state conviction is rarely the end of the analysis. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) uses short, high-impact terms—like “rape”—to define “aggravated felonies.”
In mid-2025, DHS began implementing a “new interpretation” of INA § 235(b) that treated large numbers of long-present noncitizens apprehended in the interior as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention without bond.
Over the last year, immigration detention litigation has shifted from a niche procedural dispute to a central battleground in removal defense. The flashpoint is DHS’s effort to reclassify broad categories of detained noncitizens.
