Plane Hijacker Walks Free — Judge Blamed

Man stands in courtroom before judges and stenographer.

A Cuban man who helped hijack a passenger plane to Florida in 2003 has been ordered freed from U.S. immigration detention because the government could not show it can actually deport him.

Story Snapshot

A federal judge ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release convicted hijacker Maikel Guerra Morales within 24 hours because his deportation is not “reasonably foreseeable.”
The ruling relies on a Supreme Court case that says the government cannot lock immigrants up indefinitely when no country will take them back.
Guerra Morales served more than 20 years in prison for hijacking a Cuban plane to Key West and was then held months longer in immigration custody.
The case highlights a larger failure of the immigration system, where officials promise removal but cannot secure travel documents or a country of return.

Judge’s Order Releasing a Convicted Plane Hijacker

Federal Judge John E. Steele of the Middle District of Florida granted a habeas corpus petition filed by Maikel Guerra Morales, a Cuban national who helped hijack an airliner from Cuba to Key West in 2003. Steele’s order directs Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release Guerra Morales from civil immigration detention within 24 hours and place him under an order of supervision, meaning he will live in the community but remain under monitoring and conditions set by ICE.

Court records show that Guerra Morales finished a sentence of more than twenty years in federal prison for air piracy before being transferred to ICE custody. The hijacking involved six Cubans who forced the plane to divert from Isla de la Juventud to Florida and were later convicted in U.S. court. After completing his criminal punishment, Guerra Morales stayed locked up, not because of new crimes, but because immigration authorities said they were trying to deport him.

Legal Rule Against Indefinite Immigration Detention

Judge Steele’s ruling turns on a clear legal rule: the government cannot keep someone in immigration detention forever when it cannot show that deportation is likely soon. In 2001, the Supreme Court’s decision in Zadvydas v. Davis said that holding immigrants with final removal orders for longer than six months raises serious constitutional problems if there is no “significant likelihood” of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future. After that point, the burden shifts to the government to prove deportation is actually possible.

In Guerra Morales’s case, Judge Steele found that the government failed this test. Court documents state that officials talked about deporting him to Mexico, but they did not provide proof that Mexico agreed to accept him, nor that they had secured travel documents or a concrete removal plan. Steele wrote that immigration authorities had more than three years since the removal order, and over six months of renewed detention, yet still could not lay out a specific path to send him to Cuba, Mexico, or any other country.

Why Supporters and Critics Are Both Angry at the System

Many conservatives see the case as proof that the system puts citizens last, because a foreign national involved in a hijacking is now free inside the United States due to what they view as legal technicalities. They look at the facts—a violent crime, a long prison term, and then release instead of removal—and feel the government is failing in its basic duty to protect the public and secure the border. That anger is often directed at “activist judges,” but the judge here was applying existing Supreme Court law that Congress has not changed.

Many liberals, on the other hand, focus on the rule against indefinite detention and see this case as one more sign that ICE often holds people longer than the law allows when deportation plans are vague or stalled. Human rights advocates have long argued that keeping people locked up with no clear end date causes serious harm and violates due process. They point out that Guerra Morales served the sentence the criminal court gave him and then sat in a civil cage while officials searched for a country that would not take him.

Deeper Failure: Promised Deportations That Never Happen

Behind the shouting from both sides is a deeper problem that many Americans now recognize: a federal system that talks tough but cannot deliver on its basic promises. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy, guided by court rulings like Zadvydas, says that after six months the agency must either show real progress toward removal or start moving toward release. An earlier government audit found that officials often lacked passports, travel documents, or agreements with receiving countries, making timely deportation impossible for some people.

🇺🇸 A Cuban national convicted of hijacking a passenger plane to Florida in 2003 has been released from ICE custody after a federal judge ruled he had been detained too long.

Miakel Guerra Morales served about 20 years in prison before being taken into ICE custody in December… pic.twitter.com/QOxEAy2cGd

— NewsForce (@Newsforce) July 14, 2026

Guerra Morales’s case fits that pattern almost perfectly. The government said it would deport him, but it did not secure a country of return, did not gain his consent for transfer where it was required, and did not get basic paperwork in order. Instead, it kept him locked up and hoped the courts would allow that limbo to continue. Judge Steele’s order is a reminder that, at least in some cases, the law still stops agencies from using endless detention as a substitute for a working immigration and foreign policy system.