Federal Court Orders ICE to Release José Francisco Orellana-Rivera — Honduran Man Brought to U.S. at Age 4, DACA Recipient, Detained Without Bond Hearing; Judge Bars Re-Detention Without Proper Hearing

A federal judge issued an order on May 15, 2026, directing ICE to immediately release José Francisco Orellana-Rivera, a Honduran national who entered the United States from Honduras in 2001 at the age of four and has lived in the country for more than two decades. Orellana-Rivera was paroled into the country as a child and later received protection under the DACA program; he is married to a U.S. citizen and has two U.S.-citizen children. He has no criminal convictions. The ruling held that immigration authorities violated his constitutional rights by detaining him without adequate procedural protections — the judge finding that the government 'violated the law by detaining Petitioner without a pre-detention hearing.' The court ordered ICE to release Orellana-Rivera 'forthwith' and barred authorities from re-detaining him without first providing a proper bond hearing. The case is one of more than 10,000 instances in which federal judges have ruled against ICE detention practices since the start of the Trump second term, according to a Politico analysis. His case parallels that of José Contreras Díaz (reported May 13, 2026 by the Texas Tribune/KSAT), another Texas DACA recipient who was illegally deported to Honduras and returned under court order. Courts have consistently pushed back on the administration's detention practices as exceeding procedural requirements — findings that conflict with the administration's claim that all undocumented individuals may be detained without individual hearings. As of May 15, at least 261 DACA recipients have been arrested by ICE and at least 86 deported since the Trump second term began in January 2025, according to DHS data.