The Briefing:
- The Supreme Court dismissed Genalo v. Black (No. 25-886) on September 11, 2026, after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pardoned the central figure — a Dominican lawful permanent resident who had spent 21 months in ICE custody without a bond hearing — vacating the October 13 oral argument slot.
- The Trump administration filed a replacement petition, Genalo v. D.C. (No. 26-379), ten days later on September 21, seeking expedited review of the same constitutional question through a new case involving a Dominican man who has lived in the United States since 1982.
- A Fifth Circuit panel briefly established a 90-day bond hearing requirement for ICE detainees on July 2, but the full court vacated that ruling just eight days later for en banc rehearing — no such binding rule is currently in effect while the circuit reconvenes.
- The petition in Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha (No. 26-104), targeting the no-bond policy as applied to longtime residents with no criminal records, was distributed for the September 28 conference; its fate had not been confirmed as of press time.
A single gubernatorial pardon in late August unraveled what had been the Supreme Court's marquee immigration argument of the new term — and the Trump administration moved within ten days to rebuild what the pardon had taken apart.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's decision to grant a full and unconditional pardon to Keisy G.M., a Dominican lawful permanent resident who had spent 21 months in ICE custody without a single bond hearing, eliminated the criminal conviction that had authorized his mandatory detention. With the legal foundation of the case gone, both parties filed a joint stipulation on September 11, and the Supreme Court dismissed Genalo v. Black (No. 25-886), canceling the October 13 oral argument and leaving one of the most significant immigration questions of the decade unanswered by the nation's highest court.
Who Is Keisy G.M. — and How His Case Reached the Supreme Court
Keisy G.M. came from the Dominican Republic and built his life in the Bronx over more than a decade — raising U.S. citizen children, working steadily at a healthcare supply company, and caring day-to-day for his elderly, medically vulnerable mother. A 2015 guilty plea to second-degree assault provided the statutory trigger for ICE to detain him under Section 1226(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which compels the government to hold certain noncitizens with qualifying criminal records throughout removal proceedings, without any individualized hearing to assess whether they actually pose a danger or a flight risk.
ICE held him for 21 months without a single such hearing. The Second Circuit ruled on May 31, 2024, that his prolonged custody without any individualized review had crossed the constitutional line drawn by the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. The appeals court placed the burden of justifying continued imprisonment squarely on the government, requiring proof by clear and convincing evidence. The Trump administration challenged that ruling, and on June 15, 2026, the Supreme Court granted certiorari and scheduled argument for October 13. Gov. Hochul's pardon arrived before G.M.'s own merits brief was even due, vacating the conviction that formed the basis of both his removal proceedings and his mandatory detention — rendering the entire case moot.
The Administration Strikes Back: A Replacement Case Filed in Ten Days
Solicitor General D. John Sauer telegraphed the government's next move in the same letter notifying the Court of the forthcoming dismissal, writing that his team would work to identify alternative vehicles to bring the detention question back before the justices during the current term.
Ten days later, on September 21, the administration filed Genalo v. D.C. (No. 26-379) on an accelerated track, asking the justices to grant certiorari before judgment. The new petitioner — identified only as D.C., a Dominican national who has lived in the United States since 1982 and faces removal on drug trafficking and domestic violence charges — raises the same core constitutional questions as the case that was dismissed. Sauer cited the Court's own precedent of accepting cases early to prevent a term's central legal question from going unanswered.
The unresolved issue is the same one the Court deliberately sidestepped in Jennings v. Rodriguez (2018): does the Fifth Amendment's due process clause eventually require a bond hearing for someone held under Section 1226(c), and if so, what standard of proof must the government meet to justify keeping that person locked up?
The Fifth Circuit's 90-Day Ruling — Issued, Then Pulled Back Eight Days Later
On July 2, 2026, what appeared to be a breakthrough ruling arrived for immigrant communities across Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. A divided three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit ruled 2-1 in Sosnava Rodriguez v. Ortega that the government cannot hold people under its mandatory no-bond policy for more than 90 days without offering an individualized bond hearing. Judge Leslie H. Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote for the majority that the government must present a concrete, case-specific justification — genuine danger or documented flight risk — not simply invoke a detention category. The ruling arose from the arrests of three longtime Texas residents: each a father of U.S. citizen children, each with no criminal record, all detained during routine traffic stops and immediately handed over to immigration authorities.
Eight days later, on July 10, the full Fifth Circuit vacated the panel opinion on its own motion and granted rehearing en banc, meaning every active judge on the circuit will now reconsider the ruling collectively. On July 21, the en banc court additionally stayed the underlying district court orders that had freed the three men. The practical result is that the mandatory detention policy remains in full effect pending the en banc decision. The 90-day rule carries no binding force in any courtroom in Texas, Louisiana, or Mississippi. En banc briefing was scheduled to conclude around September 2026, with oral argument and a final decision to follow. District court judges across the circuit have nonetheless continued granting habeas relief to individual detainees on Fifth Amendment grounds, citing the persuasive logic of the vacated panel opinion — but those wins remain case-by-case and vulnerable to reversal.
The Larger Battle: A No-Bond Policy Now at the Supreme Court's Doorstep
Beneath the criminal-alien detention dispute sits a broader and arguably more sweeping legal challenge. In July 2025, the Department of Homeland Security issued a guidance memo reclassifying virtually any noncitizen who entered without formal admission as an "applicant for admission" subject to mandatory detention under a separate provision of immigration law — regardless of criminal history or how many years that person has lived inside the United States.
That policy flooded federal courts across the country. ProPublica data through mid-2026 show approximately 45,000 habeas corpus petitions filed since January 2025, a surge that one federal judge in Georgia described as "an administrative judicial emergency." Circuit courts have fractured sharply: the Second Circuit struck the policy down in April 2026, the Eighth Circuit upheld it, and the Fifth Circuit's en banc panel is now reconsidering the constitutional question from the ground up.
The petition in Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha (No. 26-104) — centered on a Brazilian national who has lived in the United States for over two decades and was arrested in September 2025 under the no-bond policy despite having no criminal record — was distributed for the September 28 Supreme Court conference. The Court's September 29 order list had not confirmed a certiorari grant as of this writing.
Legal observers broadly expect the Court to take up at least one of these no-bond cases this term. If the justices accept both Genalo v. D.C. and Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha, the 2026-27 term could deliver two simultaneous landmark rulings on immigration detention — one governing those with prior criminal records, another addressing the government's authority to hold longtime, law-abiding residents without any individualized review. Together, those rulings would determine what ICE may legally do with hundreds of thousands of people who have spent years — and in many cases entire adult lifetimes — building their lives inside the United States.
