Escobar Ramirez: D. Kansas Section 2241 Order Applying the Victim-Centered Directive

Escobar Ramirez v. Mullin, 2026 WL 2619875 (D. Kan. Sept. 4, 2026), granted habeas relief to a person whose derivative U-visa application had received a bona fide determination and deferred action that USCIS had not revoked.

A derivative U-visa record with active deferred action

Marlon Escobar Ramirez entered in 2021 and applied in 2023 based on his mother’s status as a cooperating crime victim. USCIS issued a bona fide determination and deferred action in August 2024. After ICE detained him in July 2026, the government confirmed that the deferred-action grant remained in force.

What ICWC changed

The court read the May 2026 ICWC stay as restoring ICE Directive 11005.3, Using a Victim-Centered Approach with Noncitizen Crime Victims for people in this position. The December 2, 2021 directive generally instructed ICE to refrain from civil enforcement against known beneficiaries and applicants absent exceptional circumstances. The court did not purport to enforce another district court’s injunction directly; it evaluated compliance with the restored directive.

The exceptional-circumstances analysis

The government pointed to a dismissed DUI charge and speeding infractions. But the speeding history appeared in the U-visa materials, and the DUI arrest preceded USCIS’s background check and discretionary grant. The government identified no later circumstance that USCIS had not already been able to consider. The court found that relying on the same known facts would make the directive’s presumption meaningless.

Disposition

The court granted the Section 2241 petition and ordered release by September 14, 2026. It did not reach the alternative custody-statute issue because the government had accepted Section 1226(a) and a bond hearing was scheduled.

Narrow lessons from the ruling

The result turned on an active grant, the restored directive, and the absence of a genuinely new exceptional circumstance. Files should separate information disclosed before USCIS’s grant from later events and preserve the exact approval chain.