Gill v. Raycraft et al

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
______
RAHUL GILL,
Petitioner,
v.
KEVIN RAYCRAFT et al.,
Respondents.
____________________________/
Case No. 1:26-cv-0184
HON. ROBERT J. JONKER
OPINION
Petitioner, a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainee currently
detained at the Calhoun County Correctional Facility in Battle Creek, Calhoun County, Michigan,
initiated this action by filing a counseled petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C.
§ 2241. (Pet., ECF No. 1). For the following reasons, the Court will deny the petition for a writ
of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241.
BACKGROUND
Petitioner is a native and citizen of India. (Pet., ECF No. 1, PageID.1; Notice to Appear
(NTA), ECF No. 4-1, PageID.27). On April 19, 2023, the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) issued Petitioner a Form I-862, NTA, charging Petitioner with inadmissibility under
§ 212(a)(6)(A)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) because Petitioner is an immigrant
“present in the United States without being admitted or paroled, or who arrived in the United States
at any time or place other than as designated by the Attorney General.” (NTA, ECF No. 4-1,
PageID.27). Petitioner was released from custody.
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On November 26, 2025, Petitioner was encountered and arrested by ICE agents and
detained in the Calhoun County Correctional Facility. (Pet., ECF No. 1, PageID.1). On December
2, 2025, an immigration judge granted Petitioner’s request for bond and set a bond amount of
$5,000. (Id.; Immigration Judge Order, ECF No. 4-2, PageID.31). DHS then filed a notice of
appeal, invoking the “automatic stay” under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.19(i)(2). (Pet., ECF No. 1, PageID.1;
Notice of ICE Intent to Appeal Custody Redetermination, ECF No. 4-3, PageID.34). DHS
subsequently filed a motion for a discretionary stay of the immigration judge’s bond order, which
was granted by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) on December 30, 2025. (Stay Order,
ECF No. 4-4, PageID.37). Petitioner remains detained pending completion of the BIA appeal
process. (Resp., ECF No. 4, PageID.14).
In Petitioner’s § 2241 petition, Petitioner challenges the lawfulness of his current detention
and asks the Court to, among other things, assume jurisdiction over this matter and issue a writ of
habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241 ordering Respondents to release Petitioner. (Pet., ECF
No. 1, PageID.8). In an order entered on January 24, 2026, the Court directed Respondents to
show cause, within three business days, why the writ of habeas corpus and other relief requested
by Petitioner should not be granted. (Order, ECF No. 3). Respondents filed their response on
January 28, 2026, (ECF No. 4), and Petitioner filed his reply on February 3, 2026, (ECF No. 5).
HABEAS CORPUS LEGAL STANDARD
The Constitution guarantees that the writ of habeas corpus is “available to every individual
detained within the United States.” Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 525 (2004) (citing U.S.
Const., Art I, § 9, cl. 2). Section 2241 of Title 28 confers the federal courts with the power to issue
writs of habeas corpus to persons “in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of
the United States.” This includes challenges by non-citizens in immigration-related matters. See
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Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 687 (2001); see also A. A. R. P. v. Trump, 605 U.S. 91,
94 (2025).
DISCUSSION
The Court has reviewed immigration detainee petitions and granted habeas relief in
hundreds of recent cases challenging Respondents’ application of a Section 1225 mandatory
detention regime to people like Petitioner here, who should be handled under the discretionary
detention regime of Section 1226. This is not such a proceeding. To the contrary, an immigration
judge applied the Section 1226 regime and ordered Petitioner’s release on a $5,000 bond.
Petitioner was not released on bond only because Respondents appealed and invoked the automatic
stay provision under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.19(i)(2). He remains detained now because Respondents
later requested and obtained a discretionary stay under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.19(i)(1) for the pendency
of the appeal. The question before the Court is whether those provisions violate Petitioner’s Fifth
Amendment due process rights. The Court concludes that they do not.
Through the INA, Congress has given the Executive broad grants of discretion. Section
1226(a), specifically, authorizes the Attorney General to detain a noncitizen during removal
proceedings and to decide whether release on bond or conditional parole is appropriate. Section
1226(e) then restricts judicial review of such discretionary judgments, providing that courts may
not “set aside” decisions regarding detention, release, or bond. Id. § 1226(e).
This does not mean that the Court may not review the constitutionality of the overall
statutory scheme Congress has created. Demore v. Kim, 538 U.S. 510, 517 (2003) (“Section
1226(e) contains no explicit provision barring habeas review,” and does not bar a “constitutional
challenge to the legislation authorizing his detention without bail.”). Nor does it mean that the
Court may not consider whether, in certain cases, the combined effect of the Attorney General’s
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discretionary decisions results in a violation of a petitioner’s constitutional rights. See Jennings v.
Rodriguez, 583 U.S. 281, 312 (2018) (instructing the court of appeals to consider whether the
petitioners’ constitutional rights had been violated by prolonged detention under § 1226(a)). But
it does reflect Congress’s judgment that it is best to entrust the Executive with the responsibility
of making the day‑to‑day determinations that structure the detention process and to insulate those
determinations from judicial second‑guessing. So long as the Executive’s exercise of that
discretion conforms to the statutory scheme and does not result in constitutional violations, the
Court will not second guess Congress’s decision to grant the Executive such discretion. Thus, it
is the Court’s role to verify that Petitioner obtains the procedural safeguards prescribed by
Congress and by the Constitution, but it is not the Court’s role to substitute its own judgment for
that of Congress, the Immigration Judge, the BIA, or DHS.
Here, there is no question that Petitioner has received the protections granted by Congress
because the authorities are proceeding under Section 1226 and its implementing regulations. In
deciding whether this has resulted for Petitioner in a violation of the Constitution, the Court is
guided by Supreme Court precedent demonstrating that one of the most important factors for courts
to consider is the length of time the detention has lasted. In Zadvydas, for example, the Court
considered the constitutionality of detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(6), which applies to
detainees who are subject to a final order of removal. 533 U.S. 678, 682 (2001). Although the
statute permitted detention “beyond the removal period,” the Court emphasized that, at a certain
point after removal no longer seemed reasonably foreseeable, indefinite detention would become
constitutionally problematic. Id. at 699. The Court declined to identify a fixed point in time at
which further detention would be impermissible, but it designated six months as a “presumptively
reasonable period” of time for the detention to last. Id. at 701.
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That same focus on the length of the detention can be seen in Demore, which considered
whether mandatory pre-removal detention under § 1226(c) was constitutionally permissible. 538
U.S. 510, 531 (2003). The Court concluded that it was, but a central aspect of its reasoning was
tied to the fact that such mandatory detentions tend, on average, to be quite short. Id. at 529–30.
The record showed that most § 1226(c) detentions concluded within a few months, with the
majority lasting less than the six-month period that the Court had recognized as presumptively
reasonable in Zadvydas. Id. The Court expressly relied on this fact to conclude that the statute, as
written, was constitutional. Id. at 531. And Justice Kennedy’s concurrence suggested that the
result might have been different if the government were responsible for “unreasonable delay” that
caused the detention to extend significantly longer. Id. at 532 (Kennedy, J., concurring).
Drawing insight from these cases, a number of courts of appeals have recognized that the
length of time the petitioner has been detained is one of the most important factors to consider
when determining whether pre-removal detention is constitutional. See, e.g., German Santos v.
Warden Pike Cnty. Corr. Facility, 965 F.3d 203, 212 (3d Cir. 2020) (granting relief after the
petitioner had been detained for two-and-a-half years); Velasco Lopez v. Decker, 978 F.3d 842,
851 (2d Cir. 2020) (granting relief after the petitioner had been detained for fifteen months);
Hernandez-Lara v. Lyons, 10 F.4th 19, 29 (1st Cir. 2021) (granting relief after the petitioner had
been detained for ten months); and Black v. Decker, 103 F.4th 133, 137–38 (2d Cir. 2024) (granting
relief to two petitioners who had been detained for seven months and twenty-one months
respectively). Other factors that may affect the decision include whether the detention is likely to
continue, whether the reasons for the delay are due to actions taken by the petitioner or by the
government, and “whether the alien’s conditions of confinement are ‘meaningfully different[]’
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from criminal punishment.” Id. (quoting Chavez-Alvarez v. Warden York Cnty. Prison, 783 F.3d
469, 478 (3d Cir. 2015)).
In this case, the duration and circumstances of Petitioner’s detention do not yet create a
constitutional problem. Supreme Court precedent has made clear that detention during the
pendency of removal proceedings is constitutionally permissible for at least some not-insignificant
period of time. See Demore, 538 U.S. at 531 (explaining that “detention during removal
proceedings is a constitutionally permissible part of that process” and upholding confinement
lasting several months). Even the six-month period discussed in Zadvydas was not referred to as
a hard limit on the length of time that an alien may be detained, but was rather offered as an
example of a “presumptively reasonable” period of time, before which courts should not call into
question the Executive’s discretionary decision to keep an alien in detention. 533 U.S. at 701
(“This 6-month presumption, of course, does not mean that every alien not removed must be
released after six months.”). Moreover, Zadvydas dealt with detainees who were subject to final
orders of removal, whereas the Petitioner in this case is still in the removal process and is thus still
undergoing the specified processes to which he is due. See Soberanes v. Comfort, 388 F.3d 1305,
1311 (10th Cir. 2004) (recognizing that detention during the removal process is “more akin to
detention during the administrative review process, which was upheld in Demore” than it is to the
indefinite detention that was at issue in Zadvydas).
Accordingly, at present, Petitioner’s detention does not violate the Constitution. Should
circumstances materially change—whether because proceedings stall, delays accumulate, or the
detention becomes unreasonably prolonged for some other reason—the petitioner remains free to
file a new § 2241 petition asserting an as‑applied challenge at that time.
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Conclusion
For the reasons discussed above, the Court will enter a judgment dismissing Petitioner’s
petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241 without prejudice.
Dated: April 7, 2026 /s/ Robert J. Jonker
Robert J. Jonker
United States District Judge
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