A University of Minnesota business student who has been in ICE custody since March — despite an immigration court judge ruling he cannot be deported — brought his case to a federal judge Monday.
Doğukan Günaydın is one of at least three Minnesota international students in recent months who remained in ICE custody after an immigration judge ordered their release, because DHS invoked a little-used stay to override the immigration judge’s decision.
Hannah Brown, an attorney for Günaydın, argued in federal court in St. Paul that her client has not received due process. Under the Department of Homeland Security’s current process to block an immigration judge’s decision, she said, the outcome of a case in immigration court “doesn’t matter.”
“DHS is acting as the judge, jury, and executioner in Mr. Günaydın’s case,” she said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Friedrich Siekert acknowledged Günaydın’s success in immigration court, but said that the proper forum to decide his case was the Board of Immigration Appeals.
“We concede that Mr. Günaydın is winning,” he said. However, he said, though the government might ultimately lose the case, it had the right to detain Günaydın while the appeal was pending. “His detention today is not unlawful.”
Günaydın, an international student from Turkey, was arrested near his St. Paul apartment on March 27 while on his way to a class at the University of Minnesota, where he is studying for a STEM MBA. DHS explained he had been detained on the basis of a 2023 drunk-driving incident, and invoked a little-used law alleging he was a danger to public safety and therefore deportable.
On April 14, Immigration Judge Sarah Mazzie ordered him free on bond, and on April 30 she terminated the proceedings against him altogether, finding that DHS had not proven that he was deportable.
Yet he remains detained in the Sherburne County Jail because the Department of Homeland Security appealed Mazzie’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). When DHS appealed the decision, it also invoked a little-used law that allows it to unilaterally stay the decision — effectively overriding the immigration judge’s ruling for a period of 90 days, with possibilities to extend beyond that, while an appeal is pending before the board.
Günaydın is one of at least three Minnesota international students detained by ICE in recent months. In all three cases, an immigration judge ordered them released on bond. And in all three cases, DHS issued an automatic stay to keep them jailed.
One of them, Mohammed Hoque, a Bangladeshi student at Minnesota State University, Mankato, has since been freed following an order from U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell. Blackwell cited “exceptional circumstances” including Hoque’s medical issues and credible free speech concerns, finding it was likely ICE had targeted him over pro-Palestine social media posts.
The third, Aditya Harsono, a Southwest Minnesota State University graduate from Indonesia, remains jailed.
Kerry Doyle, a Philadelphia-based immigration attorney who worked as general counsel for ICE under Joe Biden’s administration and also spent two decades in private practice, filed declarations with the court in Hoque and Harsono’s cases.
In her decades of work as an immigration attorney, Doyle said, she had never seen a prosecutor file an automatic stay in any of her clients’ cases or any other case she had heard of.
“Use of the automatic stay regulation to unilaterally prevent an Immigration Judge’s bond order from taking effect has been extraordinarily rare,” she wrote.
‘A different climate’
In Monday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan asked both sides how long they anticipated before a decision from the BIA. Brown said that a decision could take two to five months. Siekert said the BIA appeared to be looking at both issues on a fast track, but did not specify an expected timeline.
Bryan asked Siekert whether he expected the government to stop appealing, if the BIA ruled in Günaydın’s favor. Siekert said that in his experience, the government typically did not appeal BIA decisions.
But Bryan pressed on whether that precedent might continue to hold.
“I wonder how much our current climate is different from your experience and what you can draw from,” he said. “High-profile members of the current administration are talking about suspending the habeas process.”
Brown agreed, enumerating the many ways DHS could continue to appeal or issue further stays. She also pointed to the rare use of the public safety law DHS had invoked to charge her client.
“Mr. Günaydın is evidence that we are in a different climate than we were a few months ago,” she said.
Brown said she expects to file an amended lawsuit later this week, challenging the constitutionality of the automatic-stay regulation.
Bryan issued an order after the hearing extending Günaydın’s temporary restraining order, which bans the government from transferring him out of Minnesota. Bryan may consider further relief — including the possibility of releasing Günaydın — after receiving Brown’s new complaint and the government’s response.
‘He doesn’t see the sky’
About 40 of Günaydın’s supporters came to court. Mattias Kostov, a close friend of Günaydın’s, came with his parents.
He described the hearing as “moving in the right direction.”
Kostov said he speaks with Günaydın daily. Forty-seven days in jail was taking a toll on him, he said. “He doesn’t get to go outside. He doesn’t see the sky,” he said.
Viktor Kostov, Mattias’ father, said Brown had made good points about DHS acting as judge, jury and executioner.
“According to the Constitution, everyone should have due process and a fair trial,” he said.
He scoffed at the government’s argument that BIA would act faster since Günaydın is detained. “Let’s keep him detained, because it’s good for him,” he said, summarizing the government’s argument. “It shows the absurdity of abandoning due process.”
