Filed Date: Dec. 25, 2025
Case Ongoing
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This case challenges the federal government’s implementation of a “Safe Third Country” agreement with Honduras and related regulations authorizing immigration judges to pretermit asylum applications and remove asylum seekers to Honduras.
On December 25, 2025, Nallelys Liseth Caballero-Arauz filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against Attorney General Pamela Bondi, the U.S. Department of Justice, EOIR Acting Director Sirce Owen, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She sought emergency declaratory and injunctive relief barring application of the 2025 Asylum Cooperative Agreement (“ACA”) with Honduras, the 2019 interim final rule implementing ACA removals, and related agency designations and guidance.
The plaintiff, a national of Panama, entered the United States in June 2024 and filed for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture in December 2024. One business day before her December 2025 merits hearing, DHS moved to pretermit her application and sought her removal to Honduras under the ACA. She alleged she had never been to Honduras and feared violence there as well as onward removal to Panama.
The complaint asserted multiple statutory and constitutional claims. First, it alleged that DHS and DOJ’s categorical designation of Honduras as a “Safe Third Country” violated 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(2)(A), which permits third-country removal only if the country is safe and provides access to a “full and fair” asylum process. The plaintiff contended that the designation and implementing rule were contrary to the statute and arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). She further alleged that the ACA rule and related guidance unlawfully precluded individualized determinations, prevented immigration judges from exercising the statute’s public-interest exception, and restricted access to withholding of removal and CAT protection. The complaint also challenged the 2019 interim final rule on procedural grounds, alleging it was promulgated without required notice-and-comment procedures and without a 30-day effective date in violation of the APA.
In addition, the plaintiff raised Fifth Amendment procedural due process claims, alleging lack of notice and impermissible retroactive application of the ACA framework to individuals who entered before its implementation. She separately brought an APA claim challenging the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision in Matter of C-I-G-M-, arguing that the BIA misapplied retroactivity principles under Landgraf by concluding that applying the ACA to earlier entrants was not retroactive. The complaint also asserted an Article I nondelegation claim, alleging that the ACA framework allowed DHS and the Attorney General to make outcome-determinative law through binding “Safe Third Country” designations that effectively barred asylum adjudication without sufficient statutory limits from Congress.
The plaintiff sought a temporary restraining order, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief preventing her removal to Honduras, and declaratory relief invalidating the ACA rule, designation, and guidance.
A few weeks later, on January 13, 2026, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint expanding her factual allegations and claims. The amended complaint added detailed allegations regarding Honduras’s security conditions and limited asylum capacity, prior implementation failures of earlier ACA agreements, and the current administration’s ratification and implementation of the 2019 rule. It further elaborated the APA claims by asserting that the Rule, Guidance, and Designations were arbitrary and capricious for failing to account for non-refoulement obligations and departing from prior policy without adequate explanation. The amended complaint also added a distinct statutory claim that the Rule unlawfully stripped immigration judges of authority to apply the Safe Third Country provision’s public-interest exception, and expanded the procedural APA challenge by alleging that the agencies improperly invoked the good-cause and foreign-affairs exceptions to bypass notice-and-comment rulemaking.
The case remains ongoing at the pleadings stage.
Summary Authors
Jack Buckfire (2/24/2026)
For PACER's information on parties and their attorneys, see: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72080092/parties/caballero-arauz-v-department-of-justice/
Tharp, John Joseph (Illinois)
Gigous, Kai (Illinois)
Chicago, AUSA - (Illinois)
Oswald, Craig Arthur (Illinois)
Press, Joshua Samuel (Illinois)
See docket on RECAP: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72080092/caballero-arauz-v-department-of-justice/
Last updated April 20, 2026, 3:20 a.m.
State / Territory:
Case Type(s):
Special Collection(s):
Trump Administration 2.0: Challenges to the Government
Key Dates
Filing Date: Dec. 25, 2025
Case Ongoing: Yes
Plaintiffs
Plaintiff Description:
Panamanian asylum seeker facing potential removal to Honduras under a Safe Third Country agreement
Plaintiff Type(s):
Public Interest Lawyer: No
Filed Pro Se: No
Class Action Sought: No
Class Action Outcome: Not sought
Case Details
Causes of Action:
Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 551 et seq.
Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101 et seq.
Constitutional Clause(s):
Due Process: Procedural Due Process
Other Dockets:
Northern District of Illinois 1:25-cv-15665
Available Documents:
Outcome
Prevailing Party: None Yet / None
Relief Sought:
Relief Granted:
Source of Relief:
Issues
Immigration/Border:
Case Summary of Caballero-Arauz v. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Litig. Clearinghouse, https://clearinghouse.net/case/47564/ (last updated 2/24/2026).