Nguyen v. Hyde: Zadvydas Reaches the Pre-1995 Vietnamese Cohort, Again
- Citation
- Nguyen v. Hyde, No. 25-cv-11470 (D. Mass. June 20, 2025)
- Court
- U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts
- Statute
- 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(6); 8 C.F.R. § 241; Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001)
- Holding
- Detention beyond the six-month presumptively reasonable period was unauthorized; petitioner showed no significant likelihood of removal to Vietnam in the reasonably foreseeable future given his pre-1995 arrival; ICE also violated its own § 241 regulations. Habeas granted.
The petitioner in Nguyen v. Hyde was a pre-1995 Vietnamese arrival who had a final order of removal from the late 1990s and had been living for two decades on an Order of Supervision. He was re-detained by ICE in 2024 in connection with the broad re-detention sweeps that have characterized the post-2024 enforcement era. By the time his habeas petition was resolved, he had been in custody for nine months and ten days.
The bilateral agreement question
The 2008 U.S.-Vietnam repatriation agreement obligates Vietnam to accept the return of certain Vietnamese nationals who have final removal orders. The agreement, however, is by its terms limited to those who arrived in or after 1995. Pre-1995 arrivals — many of whom came as children of refugees from the post-war humanitarian resettlement — sit outside the agreement’s coverage. Vietnam, in practice, does not accept their return.
The Trump administration’s second-term policy has been to test that limit by re-detaining pre-1995 Vietnamese in significant numbers and seeking issuance of travel documents on an individualized basis. The success rate has been very low. In Nguyen, the government conceded that no travel document had been issued and presented no concrete evidence that one was imminent.
The Zadvydas analysis
The court applied the framework of Zadvydas v. Davis with directness. Detention beyond six months under § 1231(a)(6) is presumptively unreasonable. The petitioner had carried his initial burden by showing the bilateral-agreement gap and the long history of Vietnamese non-cooperation in pre-1995 cases. The government had not rebutted that showing with evidence of imminent removal. Habeas was granted; release was ordered subject to the existing Order of Supervision and any new conditions appropriate to the present circumstances.
“The Government’s aspiration to remove Mr. Nguyen at some unspecified future point cannot substitute for the particularized showing Zadvydas requires.”
The court also found that ICE had violated its own regulatory framework under 8 C.F.R. § 241 by failing to conduct the periodic post-order custody reviews required for detainees who have not been removed within the statutory removal period. That regulatory violation supplied an independent ground for habeas relief.
Significance
Nguyen v. Hyde is one of the leading 2025 applications of Zadvydas to the pre-1995 Vietnamese cohort. The opinion is now widely cited in similar petitions involving Laotian, Cambodian, and other Southeast Asian detainees from the post-Vietnam War humanitarian resettlement era, all of whom face similar bilateral-agreement gaps. With the second Trump administration’s evident commitment to re-detention even where removal is not realistically achievable, the case is likely to be reviewed and adapted in courts across the country.
The decision also illustrates an important strategic point: the government’s burden under Zadvydas is substantive. Generic representations about ongoing diplomatic efforts will not suffice. The court demanded particularized evidence about the prospects of removal in this petitioner’s case and, finding none, ordered release.
Filed under Post-Removal Detention. Published June 20, 2025.