Background
DHS issued Nestor Alexander Cortez-Mejia an expedited removal order in 2015 and removed him to El Salvador. After he returned to the United States, DHS reinstated the order in 2018 and removed him again. Following a January 2025 arrest in Texas, DHS reinstated the 2015 order for a second time.
Cortez-Mejia expressed fear of returning to El Salvador. An asylum officer found that fear unreasonable, but an immigration judge later vacated that determination and placed him in withholding-only proceedings. Cortez-Mejia petitioned the Fifth Circuit for review on August 19, 2025, while review of the reasonable-fear determination was pending. An immigration judge denied withholding relief in February 2026, Cortez-Mejia did not appeal, and DHS removed him approximately three months later.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit dismissed the petition as untimely under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1). Cortez-Mejia filed more than seven months after the January 2025 reinstatement order and 10 years after the original removal order. The government specifically invoked the 30-day deadline, and Cortez-Mejia neither answered the timeliness argument nor sought equitable tolling.
The court recognized that its earlier cases treated reinstatement orders as reviewable final orders and treated them as final for filing purposes only after reasonable-fear and withholding proceedings ended. It also noted that the Supreme Court’s decision in Riley v. Bondi may call that framework into question. But because the 30-day rule is a mandatory, nonjurisdictional claim-processing rule that must be enforced when properly raised, the panel dismissed on timeliness grounds without deciding whether Riley undermined jurisdiction or whether Cortez-Mejia’s removal made the case moot.
Key Takeaways
- Section 1252(b)(1)’s 30-day filing deadline is a mandatory claim-processing rule when the government properly invokes it.
- A petition filed more than seven months after reinstatement was untimely, and the petitioner offered no response or equitable-tolling argument.
- The panel left unresolved whether Riley v. Bondi affects Fifth Circuit precedent treating reinstatement orders as final removal orders and whether the petitioner’s removal mooted the case.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores the filing risk facing noncitizens who challenge reinstated removal orders after Riley. Although prior Fifth Circuit precedent linked finality to completion of reasonable-fear and withholding proceedings, this panel enforced the deadline based on the much earlier reinstatement order while expressly declining to resolve the broader finality question.
Practitioners should therefore treat the 30-day period following reinstatement as potentially controlling and should expressly preserve any equitable-tolling argument rather than waiting for withholding-only proceedings to conclude.