The Ninth Circuit has affirmed summary judgment for a certified class of detained noncitizens in Western Washington, holding that unadmitted aliens apprehended in the interior of the United States are not subject to mandatory, bondless detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) and instead remain eligible for discretionary release on bond under § 1226(a).
The Court held that the traditional, thirty-year understanding of § 1225(b)(2)(A) as limited to aliens seeking entry at the border finds greater support in the statute's text, structure, and history than the government's 2025 reinterpretation, which would render the phrase "seeking admission" superfluous and sits in tension with the Court's own precedent in Torres v. Barr. The Court joined the Second, Sixth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits in rejecting the government's position, deepening a circuit split with the Fifth and Eighth Circuits, over a dissent that would have deferred to the government's textual reading.
The full text of Rodriguez Vazquez v. Bostock can be found here: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/07/30/25-6842.pdf