Immigration judge sets $10K bond for Bloomington man after federal habeas win

An immigration judge on Friday (Oct. 2) granted a $10,000 bond for Cesar Augusto Cepeda Gomez, one of two Bloomington men detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a month ago.

The granting of the bond came after a federal court ruled that ICE could not continue holding him without giving him a chance to seek release.

While Cepeda Gomez is now on a clear path to release, a man who was detained in Bloomington at the same time, is still working to get a bond hearing. As Cepeda Gomez did, Manuel Alejandro Nadal-Ortiz has filed for a writ of habeas corpus, and is waiting for a response from the government. Both men are Venezuelans.

Even though he was granted a bond, Cepeda Gomez was still being held Friday afternoon at the North Lake Processing Center in Michigan. His attorney, Nora Galindo, told The B Square he is likely to stay there through the weekend.

Unlike criminal bail bonds that permit partial percentage payments, an immigration cash bond has to be paid in full, which is in this case $10,000, Galindo said. For payment, ICE uses an online system called CeBONDS, which still requires several steps. Galindo said Friday afternoon that those steps had not yet been completed.

“He’ll be there over the weekend,” she said, adding that the facility does not process releases outside of the work week. She estimated that Cepeda Gomez might not actually leave custody until around the middle of next week.

Cepeda Gomez’s release will come from North Lake Procession Center which is a GEO Group-owned, 1,800-bed detention facility used by ICE in Baldwin, Michigan. That’s roughly six hours by car from Bloomington. Galindo said ICE does not arrange transportation back to the community where a detainee was arrested, so someone will have to travel to Michigan to pick him up.

Friday’s bond hearing was itself conducted remotely by WebEx, Galindo said. The hearing was the result of a successful petition for a writ of habeas corpus that Cepeda Gomez filed in federal court in Michigan.

A habeas corpus petition gives someone being held by the government a way to ask a court to determine whether the detention itself is lawful. It does not decide the underlying immigration question. In Cepeda Gomez’s case, that question is whether he will eventually be permitted to remain in the United States.

Earlier in the week, on Tuesday (Sept. 29), U.S. District judge Robert Jonker had granted Cepeda Gomez’s habeas petition, ordering the government to either release him or hold a bond hearing. Friday’s bond hearing was held because of Jonker’s order.

Nadal-Ortiz pursuing parallel habeas case

Cepeda Gomez was detained Sept. 1, along with Manuel Alejandro Nadal-Ortiz.

The Indiana Daily Student reported that ICE agents detained the two men at about 9:45 a.m. in the parking lot of the Walmart on Bloomington’s west side. Both worked as delivery drivers for Walmart, and their families told the IDS that both were Venezuelans with pending asylum cases.

Nadal-Ortiz is now pursuing a habeas challenge similar to Cepeda Gomez’s, but his case has a few steps left to go. Nadal-Ortiz filed his petition on Sept. 24 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. On Wednesday (Sept. 30), U.S. District Judge Paul L. Maloney issued an order directing the government to “show cause” why the petition should not be granted.

In plain terms, Maloney has required the government to explain why Nadal-Ortiz is legally being held before the judge decides whether his detention can continue.

The government has until Monday (Oct. 5), the third business day after the order, to respond. Nadal-Ortiz then gets three business days to reply.

That means the two men’s cases are following basically the same path, but Cepeda Gomez is farther along.

In Cepeda Gomez’s case, Jonker issued the show-cause order on Sept. 11. Jonker ruled in his favor on Sept. 29, leading to Friday’s bond hearing.

Nadal-Ortiz, by contrast, is now at the earlier show-cause and briefing stage. The judge has not yet decided the merits of his habeas petition.

The proceedings are in Michigan, instead Indiana, because habeas petitions are filed in the federal district where a person is being held. Both men were eventually transported after their Bloomington arrests to the North Lake facility in Michigan.

Attorney: Cepeda Gomez entered U.S. legally

On Friday, Cepeda Gomez’s attorney, Nora Galindo, provided more detail about Cepeda Gomez’s immigration history.

She told The B Square he used the federal government’s program in effect at the time, which was CBP One, to request an appointment at the border. He appeared for that scheduled appointment and was allowed into the United States by the Department of Homeland Security.

“He did what the government asked him to do,” Galindo said.

According to Galindo, Cepeda Gomez then filed his asylum application on time. The application remains pending, and he has valid employment authorization based on that application. She said he has been working, paying taxes, and has no criminal history, Galindo said.

Winning the habeas case and obtaining bond do not resolve his pending asylum case or determine whether he ultimately can remain in the United States.

Key for Cepeda Gomez: Sixth Circuit Court decision

The legal issue that produced Friday’s hearing turns on two different sections of federal immigration law: 8 U.S.C. Section 1225 and Section 1226.

The government contended that Cepeda Gomez fell under Section 1225(b)(2)(A). Under that interpretation, he had to remain in detention while his removal proceeding continued, and could not receive the ordinary individualized bond determination available under Section 1226(a).

Cepeda Gomez argued that Section 1226(a) applied instead. Under that provision, the government can detain someone while removal proceedings are pending, but an immigration judge can also consider releasing the person on bond.

Jonker, the judge in the case, did not have to resolve that legal question from scratch.

In May, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had decided the same issue, in a case called Lopez-Campos v. Raycraft. Because Michigan is within the 6th Circuit, that appellate ruling was binding on Jonker.

In his opinion, Jonker wrote: “Based on the facts presented by the parties, and the reasoning of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Lopez-Campos, … the Court concludes that Section 1226(a), not Section 1225(b)(2)(A), governs Petitioner’s detention.”

The 6th Circuit also concluded that detaining the petitioners before it without the opportunity for an individualized bond hearing violated their Fifth Amendment due-process rights.

For Cepeda Gomez, the practical consequence was Friday’s hearing. The appellate decision did not require the immigration judge to release him or dictate a particular bond amount. It required that his detention be treated under the provision that allows the judge to make that individualized decision.

“Applicant for admission” versus “seeking admission”

The disagreement among federal courts turns in significant part on two phrases that sound almost interchangeable in ordinary conversation, but have produced opposite legal results.

Immigration law says that a noncitizen who is physically present in the United States but has not formally been “admitted” is treated as an “applicant for admission.”

But Section 1225(b)(2)(A), the provision the government says requires mandatory detention, refers to an applicant who is “seeking admission.”

Nine federal appeals courts have concluded that being an “applicant for admission” does not necessarily mean that a person is presently “seeking admission.”

Put another way, “applicant for admission” is a legal status, while seeking admission”” describes an activity.

Under that interpretation, a person who is already living inside the United States and is arrested there can be legally classified as an applicant for admission without currently seeking to enter the country. For such detainees, those courts have held that Section 1226(a) applies, with its opportunity for an individualized bond determination.

The 5th and 8th circuits have reached the opposite conclusion. They have held that people legally designated as applicants for admission fall within Section 1225(b)(2)(A) and are therefore subject to mandatory detention.

That means the split is now 9–2 among the 11 numbered federal appeals courts.

Only the Fifth and Eighth circuits have adopted the government’s Section 1225 interpretation.

A dramatic increase in habeas cases

The legal fight over the wording is new, under the Trump administration, Galindo said. In fact, she said, the court fight in the Cepeda Gomez habeas case is a type of litigation that didn’t even exist in her own immigration law practice, until this year.

Galindo said she has practiced immigration law for about 10 years and had never filed a habeas corpus petition before 2026. But so far this year she has filed 141 and was working on the 142nd one the day The B Square talked to her. According to habeasdockets.org in the Western District of Michigan alone there are 875 active habeas corpus petitions pending. The number nationwide is 62,641.

Galindo attributed the change to the government’s decision beginning in 2025 to treat a much broader group of people arrested in the interior as subject to mandatory detention under Section 1225.

She told The B Square that in the past, people in similar circumstances could either be released by ICE itself, or ask an immigration judge for bond, while the new interpretation forced detainees into federal habeas litigation to get access to the bond process.

That history is also a significant part of the federal appellate litigation. Courts of appeal that rejected the government’s interpretation have pointed to nearly three decades in which the executive branch generally treated people present in the interior without formal admission as eligible for bond under Section 1226.

The government’s position is that the longstanding practice of allowing bond hearings for such detainees rested on an incorrect reading of the statute, and that Congress’s 1996 immigration overhaul made the key distrinction lawful “admission,” rather than mere physical entry into the country.

That disagreement is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Supreme Court agrees to resolve the dispute

This week on Thursday (Oct. 1), one day before Cepeda Gomez’s bond hearing, U.S. the Supreme Court agreed to accept the case from the Second Circuit called Barbosa da Cunha v. Freden.

The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is on the same side of the split as the Sixth Circuit, which ruling was the authority cited for Cepeda Gomez’s required bond hearing.

The question the Supreme Court agreed to decide, which is included in the government’s petition, is whether Section 1225(b)(2)(A) mandates detention during removal proceedings for people who are present in the United States without having been admitted.

The Supreme Court’s acceptance of the case does not itself change anything related to the Cepeda Gomez case. Unless and until the justices rule otherwise, the Sixth Circuit’s decision remains controlling precedent for the federal courts in Michigan.

But the Supreme Court’s eventual decision could determine nationally which of the two interpretations is correct. Is the correct decision the one that gave Cepeda Gomez access to Friday’s bond hearing, or the mandatory-detention interpretation adopted by the Fifth and Eighth circuits.

For now, Cepeda Gomez remains at North Lake with a $10,000 bond set and the administrative process for paying it still ahead.

Nadal-Ortiz, arrested beside Cepeda Gome in Bloomington on Sept. 1, remains at an earlier stage of the same kind of federal challenge, which is waiting for the government to explain to a judge why he can lawfully continue to be detained.