A Salvadoran man who escaped immigration custody by tying bedsheets into a rope to scale a fence cannot be convicted for obstructing a pending proceeding because his removal order was final when he ran to nearby woods, a split Fourth Circuit majority ruled Thursday, reversing a Virginia federal court's decision.

In the majority opinion issued Thursday, two judges noted that Dennis Zeledon Hernandez ran in 2023, believing he would be murdered if taken back to his home country of El Salvador, after a final removal order was issued. Therefore, he did not obstruct a "pending proceeding" under 18 U.S.C. Section 1505, the majority found.

"ICE's execution of the immigration court's judgment cannot be part of the proceedings before the immigration court because the hearing before the immigration court had concluded — Zeledon was no longer 'awaiting decision' from the immigration judge," the majority said.

"The government has not pointed to — and we could not identify — a case where an agency's execution of a decision already issued by a different agency constituted a proceeding under [Section] 1505," the majority said.

Zeledon, who is from El Salvador, crossed the U.S. border near Hidalgo, Texas, in 2016 when he encountered U.S. Border Patrol and told an asylum officer that he was scared to return home due to gang violence, according to the opinion. The officer determined that Zeledon had shown a credible fear of persecution in his home country, and so he was allowed to stay while awaiting hearings on his asylum claim.

However in 2019, Zeledon failed to show up for a hearing and was ordered removed in absentia, but it was not until 2023, when he was arrested for driving under the influence in Virginia, that ICE issued a warrant for his removal, according to the opinion

Zeledon was then transferred to an ICE Detention Facility in Virginia, and he tried, via an immigration attorney, to reopen his case, claiming he hadn't received proper notice of his hearing, but was denied by an immigration judge, according to the opinion.

ICE scheduled his deportation for July 12, 2023, but Zeledon escaped the facility on July 2, 2023, and was recaptured days later in North Carolina, according to the opinion.

In a dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said he would affirm the conviction, noting that "it took a five-day search involving over one hundred local, state, and federal officials to find him almost two hundred miles away."

"This egregious conduct plainly violates 18 U.S.C. [Section] 1505. That is, by interfering with ICE's enforcement of a court order, Zeledon obstructed 'any pending proceeding … being had before any department or agency of the United States,'" Judge Wilkinson wrote. "Congress drafted the statute in capacious terms, and courts must honor them."

Judge Wilkinson said the majority's opinion went against well established precedent "and recasts case law across the country to conclude that a 'proceeding' artificially ends at the close of some ill-defined decision-making process."

He wrote that "the majority mysteriously believes that Congress in enacting a broad obstruction law cared not one whit about the obstruction of judicial orders in what was from the get-go a targeted agency enforcement action," explaining that "because the statute means what it says," he would affirm the conviction.

Representatives for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

U.S. Circuit Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Roger L. Gregory and A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. sat on the panel.

Dennis Zeledon Hernandez is represented by Isabel Maria Marin of Goodwin Procter LLP, Geremy C. Kamens, Patrick L. Bryant and Joseph S. Camden of the Office of the Federal Public Defender, and Brian T. Burgess and Jonathan E. Rankin.

The government is represented by Robert Sunderland Day, Erik S. Siebert and Daniel J. Honold of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The case is United States of America v. Dennis Zeledon Hernandez, case number 24-4665, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

--Editing by Amy French.