A federal appeals court rejected a Trump administration argument that asserted the government could perpetually "reset" a six-month maximum limit on detentions for re-detained immigrants, making their rights "meaningless."
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday in the case of Kaveh Abedi, an Iranian man whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement locked up again in 2025.
Under the ruling, the interview requirement ICE failed to meet protects a detainee’s due process rights, which guarantee fair treatment before the government takes away someone’s freedom.
“[W]e hold that the Government violated its regulations by failing to ‘promptly’ provide Mr. Abedi with an informal interview and opportunity to be heard on its reasons for revoking his release,” Judge Carolyn McHugh wrote for the three-judge panel.
Abedi’s family fled Iran and won asylum in the United States in 1991, when he was 10, according to the opinion.
After a drug possession conviction, an immigration judge in 2002 barred his deportation to Iran under the Convention Against Torture, the court said, and he followed the terms of his supervised release for more than 20 years.
ICE officers handcuffed him in his Kansas front yard on June 23, 2025, the court said.
A notice later stated that his release was revoked because “[r]emoval to a country other than Iran is now a possibility” and promised he would “promptly be afforded an informal interview.”
The government did not dispute that he never got one as of the time the appeal was briefed, the court said. Filings in a related case suggest the interview may have finally happened in January 2026, more than six months after his arrest, the opinion noted.
“Here, the Government has made no attempt to justify the lengthy delay,” McHugh wrote.
Instead, the court said, the government asked the judges not to hold it to any “particular time frame” for the interview.
“But accepting this argument would render the promptness requirement meaningless and would effectively insulate the agency’s administrative action from judicial review,” McHugh wrote.
The government also argued that the specific protections for people in Abedi’s situation applied only after he first proved he was unlikely to be deported, according to the opinion.
“The Government quotes certain language from §§ 241.4 and 241.13 out of context,” McHugh wrote, referring to two sections of ICE’s detention rules.
That reading “would effectively nullify” the section protecting people released in Abedi’s situation, the panel said.
Federal agencies must follow their own regulations, the court said, citing a 1954 Supreme Court decision. When an agency breaks a rule that protects due process rights, a detainee can win relief without proving the violation harmed him, the panel ruled.
The judges agreed with Abedi’s lawyers that the Kansas federal judge's reasoning, which rejected his challenge in October 2025, would “convert protective regulations into aspirational suggestions.”
The panel also rejected the government’s bid to restart a six-month detention clock each time it re-arrests someone, the opinion said.
In its 2001 decision in Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court said holding someone for six months after a deportation order becomes final is presumed reasonable, the court explained. After that, judges must look more closely at whether detention is still justified.
“The Government effectively asks us to treat Zadvydas as establishing a resettable six-month grace period that applies to any period of immigration detention, permitting the Government to detain a noncitizen for any number of repeated six-month stints so long as these periods of detention are separated by some moment of freedom,” McHugh wrote.
A judge granted a second petition challenging his detention, and Abedi was released Feb. 25, 2026, the opinion said. The government argued that his release made the appeal moot, meaning the court had nothing left to decide.
The panel disagreed, pointing to cases in which immigrants were arrested again after winning release, including one man who, an Arizona court found, “was redetained six weeks later without any change in circumstances and without a hearing.”
Judge Allison Eid dissented, arguing that because Abedi “has been released from immigration detention,” the appeal should have been dismissed.