The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a ruling on Tuesday that restricts ICE's ability to indefinitely reset the clock on immigration detention each time it re-arrests an individual with a final deportation order, setting a precedent with direct implications for Cubans living under supervision because their removal cannot be carried out.
The ruling, issued in the case Abedi v. Carter, No. 25-3179, states that the six-month presumption of reasonableness established by the Supreme Court in Zadvydas v. Davis (2001) "applies only to the first six months that elapse after the removal period begins."
In other words, the Government cannot use successive cycles of release and re-detention to obtain new periods of custody that are supposedly valid.
The majority opinion, written by Judge McHugh with the concurrence of Judge Phillips, also states that any detention beyond that initial period requires an individual assessment justifying the reasonable necessity of keeping the person in custody to carry out a foreseeable deportation.
The case arose from the situation of Kaveh Abedi, an Iranian citizen who arrived in the United States in 1991, was granted asylum, and in 2002 received a postponement of deportation under the Convention Against Torture.
For more than twenty years, he faithfully fulfilled all the conditions of his supervision order. In June 2025, ICE agents arrested him in the garden of his home in Kansas—where he had moved with the agency's own authorization—without alleging any violation of his obligations.
The revocation notice indicated that her freedom was suspended because "expulsion to a country other than Iran is now a possibility."
The Government also promised a prompt informal interview for Abedi to address the reasons for the revocation, a requirement established in the regulation 8 C.F.R. § 241.13(i)(3), but admitted that it had not been conducted in over six months.
The court declared that omission harmful in itself, without the need for Abedi to prove additional damage: when an agency violates a regulation that protects due process guarantees, the violation invalidates the action regardless of whether it caused a demonstrable concrete harm.
The judge Eid issued a dissenting opinion. In his view, the case had lost its purpose following Abedi's release in February 2026 — achieved through a second petition for habeas corpus — and the exception applied by the majority should be reserved only for "exceptional situations."
The ruling does not cancel deportation orders, does not grant residency or any new immigration benefits, and does not prohibit all re-detention. What it prevents is the Government from automatically restarting the six-month period with each new arrest.
For Cubans under immigration supervision, the relevance is indirect but concrete: Cuba systematically refuses to accept its deported nationals, resulting in prolonged detentions of individuals with final expulsion orders.
In recent months, ICE re-detained several Cubans released by court order without citing any violation of conditions, the same pattern that the Tenth Circuit references in Abedi as evidence that the issue may recur.
The geographical scope of the ruling is a critical piece of information: the Tenth Circuit covers Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming, as well as parts of Yellowstone National Park in Montana and Idaho. Florida, where the largest Cuban community in the country is concentrated, falls under the Eleventh Circuit and is not bound by this precedent.
On Tuesday, the same day, a judge in Florida ordered ICE to review the detention of a Cuban within 30 days whose deportation is also not foreseeable, in a separate litigation.
The ruling applies exclusively to individuals in custody following a final order under 8 U.S.C. § 1231, and not to those who are detained during active immigration proceedings under other statutes.
Each situation requires individual assessment by a certified immigration attorney.
Related videos:
Filed under: