A federal appeals court has rejected the Trump administration's argument that it can restart a six-month detention clock when immigrants are detained again after being released. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled Wednesday in the case of Kavah Abedi, an Iranian national who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in June 2025, more than two decades after he was released from immigration custody. The court found that the government could not treat the first six months of Abedi's re-detention as presumptively reasonable under a Supreme Court ruling governing prolonged detention while the government seek to remove a person from the United States.
The appeals court also ruled that immigration officials violated federal regulations by failing to provide Abedi with a prompt interview after revoking his release, denying him an opportunity to challenge the basis for his detention. The decision reverses parts of a lower court ruling and sends the case back for further proceedings. The ruling addresses the limits of the federal government's authority to detain immigrants who have final orders of removal but cannot be deported in the reasonably foreseeable future.
In its 2001 decision in Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court established a six-month period of presumptively reasonable detention following the removal period. After that, if a detainee provides good reason to believe there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future, the government must respond with evidence sufficient to rebut that showing.
The Trump administration argued that the six-month presumption should restart when a person is released from immigration detention and later detained again. The Tenth Circuit rejected that interpretation, concluding that the six-month presumption applies only to the first six months after the removal period begins and should not be applied again to Abedi's re-detention. The court sent the case back to the district court to reconsider his detention claim without applying that presumption.
The ruling does not automatically require the release of all immigrants who are detained again. Instead, it establishes how the six-month presumption must be applied when courts assess the legality of detention in circumstances like Abedi's. Abedi was 10 when his family fled Iran and entered the United States in 1991, where they were granted asylum, according to the court's opinion.
After he was convicted of a drug possession offense in California, he was placed in removal proceedings. In September 2002, an immigration judge granted Abedi deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture. He was later released under an order of supervision because his removal was not considered reasonably foreseeable.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
