Abedi v. Choate: A Twenty-Three-Year Order of Supervision and a Recalcitrant Country
- Citation
- Abedi v. Choate, No. 5:25-cv-03141 (D. Kan.) (Lungstrum, J.)
- Court
- U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas
- Judge
- Hon. John W. Lungstrum
- Statute
- 28 U.S.C. § 2241; 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(6); Zadvydas v. Davis
- Holding
- Government failed to particularize why removal of this petitioner is foreseeable in light of Iran’s recalcitrant-country status and prior 2009 refusal of travel documents; release ordered under appropriate Order of Supervision.
The petitioner in Abedi had been in the United States since 1999. A 2002 California drug conviction triggered removal proceedings; the resulting order directed removal to “any country other than Iran,” reflecting the recurring practical reality that Iran does not cooperate with U.S. removal efforts. He had lived on an Order of Supervision for twenty-three years — almost the entirety of his adult life in the country — before being re-detained by ICE in June 2025.
The recalcitrant-country posture
Iran is one of the small set of countries the United States has formally designated as “recalcitrant” in accepting the return of its nationals. The December 2024 recalcitrant-country list (the most recent at the time of the court’s ruling) confirmed that designation. Travel documents from Iran are routinely refused or simply not issued; the 2009 refusal in this petitioner’s case was illustrative rather than aberrational.
Against that record, the government’s position that removal might still be achieved in the “reasonably foreseeable future” required particularized evidence. The government did not produce it. The court’s opinion notes that no diplomatic communication, no policy change, no individualized indication of Iranian cooperation supported continued detention. The petitioner had carried his Zadvydas burden; the government had not rebutted it.
“The Constitution does not permit indefinite detention on the hope that a sovereign which has refused for two decades to accept the petitioner’s return will, this time, change its mind.”
The Lungstrum docket
Judge John W. Lungstrum of the District of Kansas has issued more than two dozen Zadvydas-grounded release orders in the period from August 2025 through April 2026. The pattern is consistent: long-detained nationals of recalcitrant countries (Iran, Cuba, China, Vietnam in many pre-1995 cases) seeking relief on records the government cannot rebut. The cases are typically resolved within weeks of filing — an unusually rapid pace for federal habeas litigation, made possible by the relatively narrow factual disputes Zadvydas generates and by Judge Lungstrum’s willingness to require government showings on tight schedules.
Significance
Abedi v. Choate is representative rather than novel. Its significance is cumulative: along with Batzogs v. Choate, the various Pozo Goldstein-represented Iranian releases, and the El Paso line of cases, it establishes that Zadvydas continues to constrain the post-July 2025 enforcement push wherever the government cannot make a particularized showing of foreseeable removal. The cases also demonstrate the durability of Zadvydas’s burden-shifting framework against an executive that would prefer a rule of more or less indefinite custody for the difficult-to-deport.
For habeas practitioners, the Lungstrum docket supplies a useful template: identify the recalcitrant-country posture early; document the bilateral or diplomatic non-cooperation; demand particularization from the government; and seek prompt resolution. Where the case is presented on this template, the success rate has been substantial.
Filed under Post-Removal Detention. Published On or before March 2, 2026.