The John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in Boston, home of the federal district court that ordered Yasmani Toyo Lara released. General Services Administration photo, 2014 (public domain).
A federal judge in Boston ordered ICE on Oct. 16 to release Yasmani Toyo Lara, a Cuban man it had held for 10 months, because Cuba will not take him back, Mexico will take him only if he agrees to go, and the government could name no other country. The ruling reaches beyond one detainee: U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin held that a person’s refusal to go “voluntarily” to Mexico is not the kind of non-cooperation that lets ICE keep the detention clock from running, an argument the government is likely to keep making as it looks for places to send people whose home countries refuse them.
Toyo Lara came to the United States as a refugee in 2012 and became a permanent resident in 2015, according to the order. A 2018 Connecticut conviction for third-degree burglary and assault, followed by probation violations, put him in removal proceedings. ICE detained him in December 2025, apparently at his workplace, an immigration judge denied bond in March after finding him a danger, and a removal order to Cuba became final on April 24.
What happened next is a compact picture of a problem ICE faces with some Cuban nationals. The government did not dispute that Cuba would not accept him. ICE then served notice that it would send him to Mexico; he said he feared going there, and USCIS issued a negative fear finding. He was bused to the border on June 1, did not cross and was returned to New England. ICE then issued two “failure to comply” notices, and an ICE declarant told the court the failure stemmed from “his expressed unwillingness to go to Mexico.” By September, ICE had told him there were no current plans to remove him, and the Mexican consulate said it had no travel documents for him.
Why “unwilling to go” did not stop the clock
Federal law requires detention for 90 days after a removal order becomes final and allows longer detention under 8 U.S.C. 1231(a)(6). In Zadvydas v. Davis (2001), the Supreme Court limited that longer detention to what is reasonably necessary to carry out removal and treated six months as presumptively reasonable. The statute also extends the removal period when a person acts to prevent his own removal.
The government relied on both points. It argued that Toyo Lara had been held less than six months after his order became final, and in a footnote that the removal period was tolled because he would not go to Mexico voluntarily. Sorokin rejected the tolling theory, writing that the government had not shown he obstructed removal or refused to help obtain travel documents, and that the record showed little effort beyond asking him to go voluntarily, which carried more weight given his stated fear. On the timing, the judge treated the six-month mark as a presumption, not a floor, and granted the petition at about five months and 22 days of post-order detention. ICE’s statement that it was “actively working” to find a third country was “unsupported by any specific facts,” he wrote, and a chance of removal at some unspecified time is not a significant likelihood of removal.
The order is narrow. It requires release under an order of supervision, bars retaliation for filing the petition and requires a compliance report by Oct. 19, but it expressly leaves ICE free to keep pursuing removal and to detain him again to carry it out, as long as it follows required procedures. It is a single district court decision with no binding effect on other judges, and the government can appeal to the First Circuit.
The practical effect is to sharpen a choice for ICE. If Mexico accepts only Cubans who agree to go, as the record in this case describes, then for people who say no a Mexican option is not a removal plan. The order leans on earlier decisions from district courts in Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia applying the same Zadvydas framework, which suggests similar petitions will keep arriving. That leaves third countries. The Supreme Court on Sept. 29 stayed a lower-court order restricting removals to third countries and agreed to decide the legality of the government’s third-country policy in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., with argument set for December, as SCOTUSblog reported. A ruling for the government would make it easier for ICE to name a destination and, with a destination in hand, to return to court with the specific facts this order found missing.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Memorandum and Order, Toyo Lara v. Moniz, Civil No. 26-14415-LTS (D. Mass. Oct. 16, 2026) (Sorokin, J.)
- Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001)
- 8 U.S.C. 1231, Detention and removal of aliens ordered removed
- SCOTUSblog, “The Supreme Court’s blessing of third-country removals,” Oct. 6, 2026
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