The Border Week: 5th Circuit Caps ICE Detention at 90 Days, $1.1 Million in Cocaine Seized at Two Laredo Ports, and 27 Years for a Meth Ring That Hid Its Loads in Lettuce

Featured ruling: the 5th Circuit caps ICE detention at 90 days without a bond hearing

90 days is now the longest that federal immigration agents may hold an undocumented person with an established life in the United States without a bond hearing, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled July 2 in a 2-1 decision that struck down a Trump administration policy of detention until deportation, the Texas Border Examiner reported. Judge Leslie H. Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote for the majority that the government must hold a hearing within 90 days of detention and give an individualized reason to deny bond; Judge James E. Graves Jr., an Obama appointee, joined him but wrote separately that even 90 days runs too long, citing "an appalling lack of humanity," while Judge Cory Wilson, a Trump appointee, dissented, arguing undocumented immigrants have no right to challenge their detention under current law. The panel drew a line between immigrants arrested at the border, whom the government may still hold until deportation, and those who built lives in the country before arrest, whom due process protections cover. The case reached the court through three Texas men, Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez, Miguel Angel Gomez Alvarado, and Alejandro Villegas Angel, whom state troopers stopped in routine traffic stops between November 2025 and February 2026, each with at least 14 years in the country, a work history, and U.S. citizen children; Immigration and Customs Enforcement held them without a judge until federal judges ordered their release and the administration appealed. That policy has drawn nearly 47,000 habeas corpus petitions in the first 13 months of the second Trump administration, more than the previous three administrations combined and with roughly one in five filed in Texas federal courts, according to ProPublica, and a Politico analysis counted more than 400 federal judges ruling for immigrants' due process claims across more than 5,000 cases, against 41 judges who sided with the administration in 250. The decision makes the Fifth Circuit the fourth federal appeals court to reject the policy, against two that have upheld it and one still weighing it, and immigration lawyers expect the Supreme Court to take up the question.

Ports of entry: $1.1 million in cocaine seized at two Laredo Field Office ports in one day

$807,723 in cocaine, 27.44 kilograms (60.49 pounds), rode inside a 2025 Chevrolet Tahoe that a CBP officer referred to secondary inspection at the Roma International Bridge on Friday, June 26, and a second stop the same day at the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville turned up 10.36 kilograms (22.84 pounds) worth $304,956 inside a 2026 Toyota Sequoia, a combined $1.1 million the Laredo Field Office seized within 24 hours. A canine and a nonintrusive imaging exam flagged each vehicle, CBP took the cocaine and both vehicles, and Homeland Security Investigations arrested the two drivers and opened a criminal case on each. The two stops add to the large seizures the Laredo Field Office has posted since May, the CBP component that moved the heaviest drug weight in Texas in the first quarter of 2026 at 35.4 percent of the state total. Counting the $604,026 in cocaine taken at the Hidalgo International Bridge on May 22, the $9.3 million in methamphetamine at the Pharr International Bridge on June 19, the $3.7 million in cocaine hidden in a cucumber shipment at Pharr on June 24, and Friday's $1.1 million, the Hidalgo, Pharr, Roma, and Brownsville seizures reach roughly $14.7 million since May 22, apart from a separate $63 million methamphetamine seizure at the Laredo port on June 19.

Border courts: 27 years for a methamphetamine ring that hid its loads in lettuce

27 years is the sentence a federal court in San Antonio gave Arturo Leija-Alvarado, a 43-year-old Mexican national who led an organization that trafficked well over 1,000 kilograms of methamphetamine into the San Antonio area, commonly hidden in loads of lettuce, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced July 8. Leija had already been convicted twice of illegal reentry and removed from the country at least three times before he crossed back illegally in the spring of 2024 and, by May, was coordinating a load concealed in 16 pallets of lettuce, followed by more loads through July, August, and September 2024 that often ran to hundreds of kilograms each, including one September shipment of at least 500 kilograms. His organization received the shipments at a secluded property in Atascosa, Texas, then moved the drugs into San Antonio, and on October 17, 2024, after a federal search warrant issued, agents watched a flatbed trailer arrive and a crew under Leija spend hours welding open its hidden compartments. A search shortly after midnight on October 18 recovered dozens of tape-wrapped, grease-covered packages that DEA laboratory testing confirmed held 63 kilograms of pure methamphetamine hydrochloride that day alone, and agents arrested Leija in an RV on the property with a firearm and $21,646 in cash, a second firearm found elsewhere on the land. Co-conspirators Francis Edward "Eddie" Hilliard, 77, drew 145 months last month and Richard William Aaron Patton is set for sentencing later this month, both having pleaded guilty with Leija to conspiring to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Fedock prosecuted the case, and U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons said Leija "ignored our immigration laws, ignored our drug laws, and ignored our gun laws."