A federal judge in Boston has written the sentence immigration lawyers have been waiting two years for a court to put on paper. “In view of the litany of deception and outright falsehoods that have infected ICE’s representations to this court and others,” Judge Brian E. Murphy wrote on September 11, “this Court finds itself in the unenviable position of stating that uncorroborated Form I-213s are worth considerably less than uncorroborated police reports, which are, themselves, not entitled to substantial weight.” And then: “it is with profound regret that this Court no longer applies the presumption of regularity to ICE.”
The order freed a Brazilian man named Eleandro Almeida De Souza, who had been held since August 14 on an immigration judge’s finding that he was a flight risk. The finding rested on one document, the ICE arrest report known as a Form I-213, which said he ran from officers during a traffic stop. Murphy held that a rebutted, uncorroborated I-213 cannot, as a matter of law, support a flight-risk finding, and ordered him released. The twelve-page memorandum, docketed as Document 19 in Almeida De Souza v. Wesling, No. 26-13761, explains why, and it is the most direct statement yet from a Massachusetts federal court about how much ICE’s paperwork is now worth.
What happened on August 14
Almeida De Souza entered the United States in September 2019, was apprehended at the border, and was released on his own recognizance while his case proceeded. On or about August 14, 2026, ICE took him into custody in Massachusetts. He filed a habeas corpus petition within days, and Murphy granted it in part, ordering that he be released or given an individualized bond hearing before an immigration judge.
At the bond hearing, the government argued he was a flight risk because he had run from officers when they stopped his car. Its only evidence was the I-213, which reads, in the portion the court quoted: “Officers initiated a vehicle stop with emergency lights and sirens. Officers approached the subject and identified themselves as ‘ICE’ and ‘Police.’ All officers and agents were wearing exterior body armor with the ICE acronym displayed. All officers were wearing body worn cameras and activated them prior to the stop. The driver stopped the vehicle but immediately opened the door and took off running.” He was found, the report says, at 58 Newton Street after a canvass.
His lawyer told the immigration judge a different story: “he wasn’t just pulled over, Your Honor. He has represented to me that he was driving when he was violently cut off by one vehicle, causing to have to jam on his brakes to avoid a collision. At the same time, he was being pinned by other vehicles. Apparently, the stop they conducted was so aggressive that he wasn’t sure what was going on. And he’s represented to me that there were no sirens or emergency lights, and that he jumped out of his car and ran out of a basic instinct of fear.” He said his client was taken into custody walking back toward his own car.
The immigration judge credited the I-213 and denied bond. The government did not produce the body-camera footage the I-213 says every officer was wearing.
What a Form I-213 is, and what it used to be worth
The Form I-213, “Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien,” is the arrest report ICE officers fill out. It records biographical data and the circumstances of the arrest. For decades, courts treated it as presumptively reliable. Murphy collects the cases: the Second Circuit calls it “presumptively reliable and admissible even absent the testimony of the officer who prepared it”; the Seventh Circuit says it is “well established that the I-213 is a presumptively reliable and admissible document”; the Ninth Circuit presumes information on an authenticated immigration form is reliable “in the absence of evidence to the contrary.”
That presumption did real work in bond hearings. An immigration judge deciding whether a detainee is a danger or a flight risk could take the I-213’s account of the arrest as true unless the detainee disproved it, which, with the officer absent and the body-camera footage unproduced, is nearly impossible.
Why the presumption is gone in Judge Murphy’s courtroom
Murphy’s reasoning runs in two steps.
First, the First Circuit already limits police reports. In Rosa v. Garland in 2024 and Maurice v. Bondi in 2025, the court of appeals held that an immigration judge may not give “substantial weight” to a police report without a conviction or corroborating evidence. District judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island have applied that rule to bond hearings repeatedly this year, holding that an uncorroborated police report cannot by itself establish dangerousness. Murphy reasons that an I-213 deserves less deference than a police report, not more, because a police report is written knowing it will be tested in a criminal prosecution, where a false statement is likely to be exposed, and an I-213 is not.
Second, ICE’s record. The order strings together a year of findings by federal judges that ICE misrepresented facts to them. Judge Murphy’s own docket supplies several: in Guevara Peruano v. Wesling this year, “the Court finds that ICE has presented multiple false statements to the Court, from its earliest submission in this case to its latest”; in D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security, the government told the Supreme Court it had been forced to “slam on the brakes mid-flight” and hold deportees in Djibouti, after which an ICE official testified the Djibouti stop had been planned and flight data showed the plane had rested in Ireland for hours. He cites a July 2026 written concession in another Boston case that ICE counsel told an immigration judge criminal charges were pending when they had been dismissed seventeen months earlier; a Maine case and a Minnesota case documenting violated orders; an Iowa federal judge’s finding that ICE served a notice to appear by mail “to obfuscate the timing of events” and “cover its tracks”; and, in a footnote, a September 2 federal criminal complaint in Minnesota charging an ICE officer with six counts of making materially false statements to a federal investigator. Another footnote points to an appendix compiled by a Minnesota court “listing 96 court orders across 74 cases that ICE violated in January 2026 alone.”
From that record: “this Court is under the disheartening impression that, at best, ICE takes cursory steps to ensure that its statements are truthful, and, at worst, has a culture of outright lying to further its litigation positions.”
What the order holds, precisely
The holding is narrower than the language, and lawyers on both sides will need the precise version. Murphy did not find that the ICE officers lied about Almeida De Souza’s arrest; he wrote that it is not his role to make credibility findings in this posture and that he was not making one. He held that where a detainee credibly rebuts an I-213’s account, and the government offers nothing to corroborate it, the I-213 alone cannot carry the government’s burden of proving flight risk by a preponderance of the evidence. He added that flight from a stop conducted the way the petitioner described it, by unmarked cars boxing in a driver without lights or sirens, is “eminently reasonable” and does not show a risk of flight from proceedings, since a person “might understandably perceive” such a stop “to be a carjacking rather than a measured law enforcement action.”
Then, explicitly going beyond what the case required, he stated the broader rule: no presumption of regularity for ICE in his courtroom, and uncorroborated I-213s worth less than uncorroborated police reports.
Why this matters beyond one case
Massachusetts federal judges have become the busiest habeas court in the country for immigration detention, because ICE’s New England field office and the Plymouth County detention facility put hundreds of detainees within the District’s reach. Bond hearings ordered by those judges are where the I-213 does its work, and a rule that the form cannot carry the government’s burden on its own changes what ICE must bring to every one of them: the officer, the body-camera footage, or corroboration.
The body-camera point is the practical one. The I-213 in this case asserts that every officer wore an activated camera. If that is true, the footage would have settled the dispute in a minute, and the government did not produce it. A court that no longer presumes regularity is a court that will draw the obvious inference from that omission.
The order is a district court decision and binds no one but the parties. It will be cited in every bond challenge in the District from now on, and the government can appeal it to the First Circuit, which Murphy notes “has yet to squarely address this issue.” Given the First Circuit’s own police-report rule in Rosa and Maurice, the government would be asking the court of appeals to hold that an arrest form written for an administrative file deserves more deference than one written for a criminal case.
Who Judge Murphy is
Brian E. Murphy was confirmed to the District of Massachusetts in 2024 after a career as a public defender and in private practice. He is the judge in D.V.D., the third-country removal case that reached the Supreme Court in 2025, and his orders in it produced the Djibouti episode he cites here. Administration officials publicly attacked his rulings in that case throughout 2025. The September 11 order does not respond to any of that. It cites the record.
What is a Form I-213?
ICE’s standard arrest report, the “Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien,” documenting a detainee’s biographical information and the circumstances of the arrest. Courts have historically treated it as presumptively reliable even without the officer’s testimony.
What did Judge Murphy decide?
That a Form I-213 that the detainee has credibly rebutted, and that the government has not corroborated, cannot by itself support a finding that the detainee is a flight risk. He ordered Eleandro Almeida De Souza released and stated that his court no longer applies the presumption of regularity to ICE.
Did the judge find that ICE lied about this arrest?
No. He wrote that credibility findings were not his to make in this posture. He relied on a series of findings by other federal judges that ICE had misrepresented facts to them, and on a criminal complaint against an ICE officer for false statements.
What is the “presumption of regularity”?
The principle that courts presume government officials have properly discharged their duties, which lets official records be accepted without proof of how they were made. Withdrawing it means ICE’s documents must be proved like anyone else’s.
Does this order bind other judges?
No. It is a district court decision. It will be cited in other bond challenges and can be appealed to the First Circuit, which has not decided the question.
Why is this case in Massachusetts?
The petitioner was arrested and detained in Massachusetts, and habeas corpus petitions are filed in the district where the detainee is held. The District of Massachusetts hears a large share of the country’s immigration detention challenges for that reason.
Quotations from the Memorandum and Order on Petitioner’s Motion to Enforce, Almeida De Souza v. Wesling, No. 26-13761-BEM (D. Mass. Sept. 11, 2026), Document 19, read in full from the court’s public docket. Case history as reported by Universal Hub, September 12 and 14, 2026. First Circuit citations as given in the order. General information about federal immigration law, not legal advice.