President Donald Trump speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House after an unspecified threat at the annual White House Correspondents” Association Dinner in Washington, Saturday, April 25, 2026, as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche looks on (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
A federal judge in Florida ordered the Trump administration to release a man previously ordered deported — some 22 years ago — due to the government’s apparent incompetence and tardiness.
The six-page order highlights an increasing problem the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has had as massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dragnets have maxed out the capacity of government agents, lawyers, and immigration judges.
In the case, Mauricio Castellanos-Gorra, a Cuban national, won habeas corpus relief by convincing U.S. District Judge Kyle Dudek, who was appointed by Trump last year, that his detention is unlawful and he “is therefore entitled to release from ICE custody” within 48 hours.
But the petitioner’s courtroom victory was not a foregone conclusion — indeed it comes as something of a stark break from the wellspring of habeas cases filed in the past 10 months as judges have almost uniformly shut down controversial efforts to reshape how ICE classifies certain immigrants in order to try to indefinitely detain them.
“The background of the dispute is straightforward,” the court explains. “Castellanos-Gorra entered the United States in 1986 and became a lawful permanent resident. Following his conviction for lewd and lascivious assault against a minor, an immigration judge ordered his removal in 2004.”
The judge does not say initially why, but notes that since Castellanos-Gorra is “a Cuban national…his actual deportation [was] unlikely at the time [and] ICE could not immediately effectuate his return.”
So, for years, he was released “on an order of supervision, which is essentially a form of immigration parole,” Dudek explains.
Somewhere over the past two decades, however, the calculus on Cuban immigrants in the U.S. changed and ICE put Castellanos-Gorra into immigration detention in October 2025. There he has remained.
“In November, ICE provided Castellanos-Gorra a notice of intent to remove him to Mexico,” the court’s order goes on to note.
Dudek points out that in cases where an immigrant is subject to a final order of deportation, there is a “mandatory” detention law.
Dudek also points out that the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the relevant federal law to make it so that the government’s “authority to detain does not stretch into infinity.”
From the opinion, at length:
To avoid serious constitutional problems, the Court read an implicit limitation into the statute: the government may detain a noncitizen only for a period “reasonably necessary” to secure his removal. And to make that rule workable, the Court established a presumption. For the first six months, detention is presumptively reasonable. After that period has passed and the alien “provides good reason to believe that there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future,” the burden shifts to the government to provide evidence sufficient to rebut that showing.
In real terms, the upshot of the law in question — 8 U.S.C. §1231 and various subsections — is all about timelines, Dudek explains.
And here, the government has kept Castellanos-Gorra detained for far too long — well past the six months cited by the nation’s high court in the 2001 case Zadvydas v. Davis, which found the 14th Amendment applies to any and all immigrants in the country, even those whose presence is “unlawful, involuntary or transitory.”
“Applied here, Castellanos-Gorra satisfies the initial temporal requirement,” the order goes on. “ICE took him into custody nearly seven months ago. Because the six-month period for presumptively reasonable detention has expired, Zadvydas’s burden-shifting framework applies.”
The judge then applies the framework. Here, Dudek elaborates on the geopolitical realities of Cuban immigrants in the country.
“[H]e is a citizen of Cuba, and Cuba is currently embroiled in political conflict with the United States,” the order continues. “As his petition details, the Cuban government is not issuing travel documents and has a history of refusing returnees. Indeed, the Government has had nearly two decades to deport Castellanos-Gorra, and it has failed. This is more than enough reason to believe his removal is nowhere in sight.”
But that’s not the end of the equation, Dudek says. The burden only shifted in the petitioner’s favor after his detention passed the six-month limit. The government had a very real potential opportunity to make a case that Castellanos-Gorra could, in fact, be deported.
That opportunity was apparently squandered.
Again, from the order:
[T]he record offers no documents, no diplomatic agreements, and no concrete evidence that he will be removed in the near future. Although the Government’s response mentions that Castellanos-Gorra refused removal to Mexico, there is no further information provided. Thus, the Court ordered the Government to provide more details about those attempted removals. The Government’s response? Crickets. Nothing was filed in response to the Court’s order. Because the Government offers nothing to suggest removal is more likely now than it was months ago, Castellanos-Gorra must be released.
Dudek goes on to make clear the Castellanos-Gorra case is not typical of habeas corpus cases as of late — the judge has previously ruled against indefinite detention under ICE’s attempted reclassification scheme — but says indefinite detention, even in a case involving a “convicted criminal” who is supposed to face the “ultimate immigration consequence,” is inimical to the U.S. Constitution.
“[T]his Court is bound by the law,” the order goes on. “And the law is clear: the Government cannot lock individuals in a cell indefinitely as a workaround for a stalled deportation process, nor can it use indefinite detention simply to placate popular opinion. The Constitution cannot be ignored just because the facts are frustrating.”
