It's Bananas
Leaving self-checkout with unpaid bananas isn’t good reason for long-term detention, court says
Touring Alligator Alcatraz, an immigration prison that Florida officials set up deep in the Everglades, President Donald Trump commented that it would house dangerous migrants. “Very soon this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet,” he said in July 2025. And also an asylum-seeker whose only crime was to walk out of a grocery store without paying for some bananas. Possessing unpaid bananas got Yunjath Daniel Pérez Vásquez ordered deported, but it shouldn’t keep him locked inside an immigration prison with no end in sight. That’s according to a federal court that ordered ICE to release Pérez Vásquez last month.
Pérez Vásquez, who arrived in the United States in 2022, had been living in Illinois as he waited for government officials to process his asylum request. Almost four years later, he got caught walking out of a Florida grocery store with unpaid bananas. He claims to have asked for help with the self-checkout, but, regardless, he wound up in court facing criminal charges. A state judge granted him bond, but immediately after his release, ICE detained him.
Despite being convicted of the most minor misdemeanor that exists under Florida law, ICE kept Pérez Vásquez locked up for approximately seven months, including at the notorious Alligator Alcatraz. During that time, an immigration judge granted him withholding of removal, a difficult to obtain form of legal protection for people who are likely to be persecuted if removed.
That hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from wanting to keep him locked up even longer. ICE claims that it will eventually force Pérez Vásquez to go somewhere, but it has no plans and can’t even point to evidence that it’s making plans to remove him.
Last month, a federal judge in California, where he was transferred after Alligator Alcatraz, ordered the government to release Pérez Vásquez after concluding that continuing to detain him, without any realistic prospect of removing him, likely violates the 5th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The court explained that months of continued detention without adequate procedural protections could not be justified. The court rejected the government’s claim that, under federal immigration law, it had no choice but to detain Pérez Vásquez because he was arrested for a theft-related crime. The mandatory detention law applies to people currently charged with or arrested of certain crimes, the judge explained. But prosecutors aren’t actively pursuing charges against Pérez Vásquez, having instead deferred his prosecution if he complies with a judge’s instructions for twelve months.
The government also argued that Pérez Vásquez’s later removal order meant that a different detention statute now governed his custody, rendering his constitutional claims moot. Again, the court disagreed. It stressed that constitutional rights do not disappear simply because the statutory basis for detention changes. A new source of detention authority, the judge explained, does not erase an existing 5th Amendment claim or eliminate the government’s obligation to satisfy constitutional requirements before continuing to deprive someone of liberty.
The heart of the opinion is the court’s application of the familiar balancing test from Mathews v. Eldridge to determine what process the 5th Amendment required. Under that framework, courts must weigh the private interest at stake, the “risk of erroneous deprivation” by using the challenged process, and the government’s interest in using the challenged process.
The court had little trouble concluding that Pérez Vásquez had a substantial liberty interest in challenging his continued confinement. Having lived in Illinois for years, worked legally, and built meaningful ties, he had far more at stake than someone newly arriving at the border. The court found that the lengthy period during which the government had permitted him to remain free underscored the seriousness of taking that liberty away.
The second factor — the risk of erroneous deprivation — also weighed heavily in Pérez Vásquez’s favor. The court noted that civil immigration detention is not meant to punish people. For that reason, ICE can’t incarcerate a person just to make life more unpleasant or send a message that they did something wrong. Immigration detention is permissible only as a means of forcibly removing someone from the United States. Where removal is unlikely to occur soon, the government has little justification for detaining someone who is neither dangerous nor a flight risk without first determining whether detention is necessary. Here, the government did nothing more than suggest that removal to a third country might eventually occur. It never offered evidence that removal was reasonably foreseeable.
The third factor also favored Pérez Vásquez because the government’s burden would have been minimal. The court emphasized that custody and bond hearings are routine procedures within the immigration system. While recognizing the government’s legitimate interest in enforcing the immigration laws, the judge concluded that those interests could be pursued while still providing basic procedural safeguards. It could, for example, give him a hearing at which it showed that he was either dangerous or a flight risk. Instead, the government failed to identify any legitimate reason for denying Pérez Vásquez a hearing before an immigration judge.
Having already detained Pérez Vásquez for almost seven months without giving him the constitutionally required process, the court ordered his release. It also barred immigration authorities from re-arresting or re-detaining him unless they first provide notice and a hearing before a neutral immigration judge, at which the government must demonstrate either that removal has become reasonably foreseeable or, by clear and convincing evidence, that detention is necessary because of public safety or flight concerns.
In a case that began with allegations involving unpaid bananas and wound up with a stint at Alligator Alcatraz, the court ultimately held that the Constitution — not the underlying misdemeanor allegations — controlled the outcome.
(Thanks to Robert Kahn of Courthouse News for letting me know about this decision.)