By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
Rigoberto Santillan Quiroz entered the United States without inspection in 2006.
ICE arrested him at a traffic stop on November 2, 2025 and initiated removal proceedings on the ground that he entered without admission or parole.
His federal habeas petition, filed in the Western District of Oklahoma, became Quiroz v. Mullin.
On June 30, the Tenth Circuit ruled in his favor, covering six states and striking down the theory behind 722 such petitions filed in Colorado in 2026 through June 15.
What the court decided
Judges Federico, Bacharach, and Ebel produced a 48-page unanimous opinion, with Federico authoring.
The government’s theory rested on §1225(b)(2)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which it read as mandating detention with no bond hearing for any noncitizen present without lawful admission, no matter how long they had been here. The Board of Immigration Appeals adopted that reading last September in Matter of Yajure Hurtado.
The Tenth Circuit rejected it. The statute uses two phrases: “applicant for admission” and “seeking admission.” The government treated them as one. The court said they are not.
“Applicant for admission” is a defined statutory term. The law defines it as any alien “present in the United States who has not been admitted or who arrives in the United States.” It is a legal classification, not a description of active conduct.
Santillan Quiroz entered without lawful inspection twenty years ago and has never been formally admitted. The statute automatically classifies him as an applicant for admission for that reason alone.
“Seeking admission” is different. It requires present, ongoing action. A person must be actively requesting lawful entry. The court held that once a noncitizen who entered without admission is inside the country, they cannot be seeking to enter it. “A person cannot make a present request for permission to enter the United States, lawfully or otherwise, once he or she has already entered.”
Santillan Quiroz satisfies the first requirement by statutory definition. He does not satisfy the second. So §1225(b)(2)(A) does not apply to him, and the court held that noncitizens who entered without admission and are arrested in the interior are generally subject to §1226(a), which requires a bond hearing.
Thirty years of practice
One of the sharpest passages deals with how the government tried to explain away its own history.
Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996. The regulation the government issued the following year said §1225(b)(2)(A) applies at the border, not the interior; every presidential administration for nearly thirty years treated that as settled. The Tenth Circuit was not inclined to set it aside.
At oral argument in May, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign conceded the policy departed from that history but argued that decades of prior practice reflected “bureaucratic inertia” rather than a legal requirement. “Bizarrely, the executive practice went completely the opposite way,” he told the panel. “Seemingly it was on autopilot for a good quarter-century.”
The court rejected that framing. What counts, it held, is “Presidential practice,” not whether that practice was reasoned. A 1997 regulatory action maintained through five administrations is not inertia. It is a longstanding interpretation, and courts give it weight.
The opinion also pointed to the Laken Riley Act, passed January 29, 2025. Congress amended both §1225 and §1226 in that legislation and did not extend §1225(b)(2)(A) to the interior. It added a new exception to §1226(c) instead, working within the existing border/interior structure. The court read that as Congress ratifying the longstanding interpretation rather than endorsing the government’s new one.
A circuit now split
The Tenth Circuit acknowledged the obvious endpoint. “Only one court, the Supreme Court, can settle this issue once and for all.”
The Second, Sixth, Eleventh, and now Tenth circuits have rejected the government’s theory. The Fifth and Eighth have accepted it. Every other numbered circuit has heard argument; the Seventh previously deadlocked without a majority opinion and has since heard new argument.
Ensign told the panel there is “a clearly defined, square circuit split on an issue of enormous importance,” according to Bloomberg Law’s coverage of the argument, and said he would not be surprised if either side petitioned the Supreme Court.
What this means in Colorado
District of Colorado judges had already rejected the government’s §1225 theory in case after case. The tally was 248 grants against one merits denial. Those grants now have circuit authority behind them.
The ruling does not resolve every pending petition. Some detainees may face separate grounds for detention under §1226(c), which mandates detention for noncitizens with qualifying criminal convictions or, under the Laken Riley Act, certain charges. But for people arrested in the interior who entered without admission and are not subject to mandatory detention on other grounds, the legal basis for holding them without a bond hearing under §1225(b)(2)(A) has been struck down.
More than 800 petitions have been filed in Colorado across 2025 and 2026; 248 have been resolved in favor of the petitioner.
Every attorney who won one of those 248 grants is eligible to seek fees from the federal government under the Equal Access to Justice Act, a fee-shifting mechanism the Tenth Circuit confirmed applies to immigration habeas cases in Daley v. Ceja.
The cumulative fee exposure is not yet calculable, but the legal basis for collecting it is now appellate-court-confirmed. Federal taxpayers will write the checks as fee petitions are filed and resolved.
The next move is the government’s
The government has fourteen days to petition for rehearing. If that is denied or not sought, the Supreme Court is the likely next step.
Santillan Quiroz entered the country unlawfully and remains in removal proceedings. The Tenth Circuit’s ruling does not change that. On remand, the district court must grant his petition and then order the government, within seven days, to either provide a bond hearing or release him.
Whether he should ultimately be removed is still before the immigration courts. The Tenth Circuit answered a narrower question: whether the government can hold him without any hearing at all while it decides.