AI Generated Image (not the actual court order in this case)
The Minnesota dentist ICE arrested at his green card interview must be released, a federal judge ruled Sunday, finding that the government had no lawful basis left to hold him. Once an immigration judge erased his removal order on Oct. 28, the Justice Department tried to keep him jailed under a mandatory detention statute, and Judge Michael J. Davis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota wrote that “there is no combination of facts or legal argument that can support this position.”
The Nov. 1 emergency order in William L. v. Brott, No. 26-cv-4609, granted the habeas petition of the 32-year-old Canadian dentist, whom WCCO-TV has identified as William Lizardo, and required his release into Minnesota on his own recognizance by 6 p.m. Central time that day. It reaches further than most release orders: ICE may not re-detain, transfer or remove him “on any theory” without the court’s leave, and would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that no conditions could assure his appearance and community safety.
Why the government reached for mandatory detention
According to the order, Lizardo came to Minnesota on an F-1 visa in 2019, earned his dental degree in 2023 and married a U.S. citizen classmate, whose I-130 petition for him was approved in January 2025. USCIS denied his Form I-485 on Jan. 15, 2026, for lack of a certified Ontario court record on a 2012 charge the Crown had withdrawn after diversion, and mailed the denial to a West Virginia address. He missed a March 26 hearing he did not know about, and ICE arrested him on Oct. 23 on the resulting order. His Form I-290B challenge to the denial is still pending.
The order also notes that USCIS “paroled him back into the U.S. from Canada to finish his application process.” That detail explains the government’s fallback. ICE first held him under the post-removal-order statute, 8 U.S.C. 1231. When the removal order disappeared, the government told the court he was now held under 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(2), the provision that requires detention of applicants for admission, and asked the judge to dismiss the petition as moot. A parolee is an applicant for admission, not someone who was admitted, which is what made that argument available.
Davis did not decide which detention statute governs; he ruled on constitutional grounds. Under the Fourth Amendment, he found the arrest “functionally warrantless” once the removal order was vacated, with neither probable cause of removability nor any flight risk, the two showings 8 U.S.C. 1357(a)(2) requires. Under the Fifth Amendment, he reasoned that “even if” 1225(b)(2) applied, the parole USCIS granted created a liberty interest and the risk of wrongful detention had already come true. He called the government’s stance, conceding the reason for the arrest no longer applied while still opposing release, “galling.”
The limits of the ruling matter. A district court habeas order binds only the parties in that case, and because Davis sidestepped the statutory question, it does not settle whether 1225(b)(2) reaches parolees with pending green card cases. It joins other Minnesota federal rulings resisting detention once its original basis is gone. The government can appeal to the Eighth Circuit, but any new arrest must clear this court first.
The green card path an immigration judge may now control
Parole status cuts both ways. In Matter of Pierre-Louis, decided Oct. 30, the Board of Immigration Appeals declined to reopen a case so an arriving alien could pursue a green card at USCIS, the agency that generally decides those applications. Federal rules keep an arriving alien in that category even after parole, and immigration judges usually lack jurisdiction over their adjustment cases. But the regulation that sets that limit, 8 C.F.R. 1245.2(a)(1)(ii), carves out a narrow exception. An immigration judge does have jurisdiction when the applicant filed the I-485 with USCIS while in the United States, left and returned on advance parole to pursue it, had it denied by USCIS, and was then placed in removal proceedings.
If the parole the order describes was advance parole tied to his pending application, Lizardo’s history appears to fit all four conditions. That would let him renew his adjustment application before the immigration judge in his reopened case, while the I-290B challenge continues at USCIS. The practical question in either forum is the same one that sank the first application: whether he can produce the certified Ontario record, or show it is unavailable, to answer the documentation charge in his notice to appear.
For other marriage-based applicants, the case shows how a stale mailing address can turn a document request into an arrest: notices sent to an old address produced a removal order he learned of only when officers detained him at his interview. Anyone who has moved since filing can check whether an immigration court case exists in their name before an appointment.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Emergency Order Granting Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, William L. v. Brott, No. 26-cv-4609 (D. Minn. Nov. 1, 2026)
- WCCO / CBS Minnesota: Canadian-born dentist taken into ICE custody at green card interview (Oct. 2026)
- 8 C.F.R. 1245.2: Adjustment of status jurisdiction in removal proceedings
- 8 C.F.R. 1.2: Definition of arriving alien
- Board of Immigration Appeals: Matter of Pierre-Louis, 30 I&N Dec. 212 (BIA 2026)
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