Argueta v. United States Immigration

• Citation: 643 F.3d 60
• Decision Date: 14 June 2011
• Docket Number: No. 10–1479.,10–1479.
• Parties: Maria ARGUETA; Walter Chavez; Ana Galindo; W.C., by and through his parents Walter Chavez and Ana Galindo; Arturo Flores; Bybyana Arias; Juan Ontaneda; Veronica Covias; Yesica Guzmanv.UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (“ICE”); Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement; John P. Torres, Deputy Assistant Director for Operations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Scott Weber, Director, Office of Detention and Removal Operations, Newark Field Office; Bartolome Rodriguez, Former Director, Office of Detention and Removal Operations, Newark Field Office; John Doe ICE Agents 1–60; John Soe ICE Supervisors 1–30; John Loe Penns Grove Officers 1–10Julie L. Meyers, Bartolome Rodriguez John P. Torres, Scott Weber, Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (3rd Circuit)

643 F.3d 60

Maria ARGUETA; Walter Chavez; Ana Galindo; W.C., by and through his parents Walter Chavez and Ana Galindo; Arturo Flores; Bybyana Arias; Juan Ontaneda; Veronica Covias; Yesica Guzman

v.UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (“ICE”); Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement; John P. Torres, Deputy Assistant Director for Operations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Scott Weber, Director, Office of Detention and Removal Operations, Newark Field Office; Bartolome Rodriguez, Former Director, Office of Detention and Removal Operations, Newark Field Office; John Doe ICE Agents 1–60; John Soe ICE Supervisors 1–30; John Loe Penns Grove Officers 1–10Julie L. Meyers, Bartolome Rodriguez John P. Torres, Scott Weber, Appellants.

No. 10–1479.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued April 14, 2011.Filed: June 14, 2011.

Gjon Juncaj, Esq., Melanie Keiper, Esq., Nicole Prairie, Esq., United States Department of Justice, Office of Immigration Litigation, Edward J. Martin, Esq., Sarah Elisabeth Whitman, Esq., United States Department of Justice, Torts Branch, Civil Division, Howard S. Scher, Esq. (Argued), United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, Washington, DC, for Appellants.Baher A. Azmy, Esq. (Argued), Seton Hall Law School, Newark, NJ, Heather Colleen Bishop, Esq., Natalie J. Kraner, Esq., Aurora Franceca Parrilla, Esq., David Marshall Reiner, Esq., R. Scott Thompson, Esq., Scott L. Walker, Esq., Catherine Weiss, Esq., Kenneth H. Zimmerman, Esq., Lowenstein Sandler, Roseland, NJ, for Appellees.Claire Prestel, Esq., Public Justice, Washington, DC, for Public Justice; Prisoners Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society of the City of New York; Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, Amicus Appellees.Lawrence S. Lustberg, Esq., Gibbons, Newark, NJ, for LatinoJustice PRLDEF; American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey; Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund; Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Newark, Amicus Appellees.BEFORE: FISHER, JORDAN, and COWEN, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

COWEN, Circuit Judge.

Defendants Julie L. Myers, John P. Torres, Scott Weber, and Bartolome Rodriguez (“Appellants”) appeal from the orders of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey denying their motions to dismiss on qualified immunity and personal jurisdiction grounds. This Bivens action arises out of (in the words of the Plaintiffs' Second Amended Complaint) an alleged “practice of unlawful and abusive raids of immigrant homes across the state of New Jersey” conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) agents under a nation-wide program instituted by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) known as “Operation Return to Sender.” (JA530.) The nine named Plaintiffs in this action were the alleged victims of a number of raids executed in New Jersey. On the other hand, Appellants are or were high-ranking federal officials, and they contend, inter alia, that the individual capacity claims for damages against them must be dismissed pursuant to the qualified immunity doctrine and the Supreme Court's ruling in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, –––U.S. ––––, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009).

We conclude that Plaintiffs failed to allege a plausible Bivens claim against these four officials. We will reverse the District Court's denial of qualified immunity (and therefore need not—and do not—consider whether we have pendent appellate jurisdiction over Appellants' appeal from the District Court's personal jurisdiction ruling or whether the District Court committed reversible error by denying the motion to dismiss on personal jurisdiction grounds).

I.

A. The Allegations

We begin with the allegations in Plaintiffs' lengthy Second Amended Complaint. The Plaintiffs named in the Second Amended Complaint resided in New Jersey, are of Latino origin, and were allegedly subjected to unlawful and abusive raids conducted under Operation Return to Sender sometime between August 2006 and April 2008.¹ In addition to a number of as yet unknown ICE agents and local police officers from Penns Grove, New Jersey (who allegedly participated in the August 1, 2006 raid of Guzman's house and were the targets of several claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the New Jersey Constitution), they named as Defendants: (1) ICE; (2) Myers, who “is, and was at all relevant times, the Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, located in Washington D.C.” (JA534); (3) Torres, who “is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations for ICE, and was at all relevant times, the Director (or Acting Director) of the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations (‘DRO’) in Washington D.C.” ( id.); (4) Weber, the Director of the DRO Field Office in Newark, New Jersey; and (5) Rodriguez, the former Acting Field Director of the Newark DRO Field Office. Appellants (as well as the unknown ICE agents) were specifically named in both their individual and official capacities.

Myers was responsible for implementing the Immigration and Nationality Act and administering ICE. “ICE press releases describing arrests in New Jersey under Operation Return to Sender have repeatedly stated that those arrests were made pursuant to the nationwide immigration enforcement strategy announced by defendant Myers and Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.” (JA534.) In turn, DRO is the ICE branch responsible for coordinating “the removal of foreign nationals not entitled to remain in the country.” ( Id.) As DRO Director, Torres oversaw the apprehension, detention, and removal of foreign nationals charged with violating federal immigration law, and he supervised law enforcement officers assigned to DRO field offices and, in particular, “Fugitive Operations Teams” (“FOTs”). (JA535.) Weber and Rodriguez were responsible for managing ICE enforcement activities in New Jersey, including the implementation of Operation Return to Sender.

Plaintiffs devoted much of their pleading to an extensive discussion of this implementation. Since 2002, DRO has overseen the National Fugitive Operation Program. This program was established to arrest and remove “so-called immigration ‘fugitives,’ ” defined by ICE as either individuals with outstanding deportation orders or persons who failed to report to a DRO officer after receiving notice to do so. (JA537.) As part of increased enforcement efforts (which allegedly included doubling the number of New Jersey FOTs from two to four), each and every FOT in the nation was allegedly ordered to arrest 1,000 fugitive aliens per year. According to the Second Amended Complaint, “[t]his quota represented an 800% increase on the previous quota of 125 arrests per year, mandated just two years earlier.” (JA538.) ICE officially commenced Operation Return to Sender on May 26, 2006, with the program purportedly directed at apprehending fugitive aliens and especially aliens with criminal records.

The number of individuals arrested by FOTs increased as a result of these changes. For instance, New Jersey FOT arrest numbers went from 1,094 in FY 2006 to 2,079 in FY 2007. Plaintiffs specifically alleged that, despite the supposed purposes of the operation itself, “[t]he majority of individuals arrested in New Jersey under Operation Return to Sender ... are neither criminals nor fugitives.” (JA542.) Accordingly, 87% of the individuals arrested in New Jersey in FY 2007 evidently had no criminal history, and ICE statistics indicated that as few as one in three individuals arrested in New Jersey was actually a fugitive alien. “The remaining individuals arrested were a mix of undocumented immigrants and, upon information and belief, United States citizens, permanent residents and visa-holders who have never had any court order, warrant, or criminal conviction against them.” ( Id.) ICE referred to these persons as “collateral arrests,” even though this “euphemism” allegedly “obfuscated” the reality that its enforcement activities often served as pretexts for sweeping up large numbers of immigrants.² ( Id.) According to a 2007 report from the DHS Inspector General, the database used to locate fugitive aliens “is outdated and inaccurate in up to 50% of cases.” (JA531.) The report further stated that DRO began hiring “lower-level, less experienced officers for fugitive operations” in 2006 and that “some fugitive operations agents have not completed the Fugitive Operations Training Program—2004 guidelines allow the agents to work for up to two years before receiving necessary training.” (JA544 (citing JA242–JA311).) ICE's enforcement activities were also the subject of a February 13, 2008 hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. At this hearing, an ICE representative allegedly acknowledged that American citizens were detained and even deported, and the chair remarked that we “had reached an era ‘where an overzealous government is interrogating, detaining and deporting its own citizens while treating non-citizens even worse.’ ” (JA543.)

Plaintiffs explained that the “practice” of unlawful and abusive raids flourished as a predictable consequence of the “arbitrary” and “exponentially-increased” quotas. (JA530.) “Under pressure from these quotas immigration agents have regularly disregarded the obligation to secure a judicial warrant or probable cause in carrying out unlawful entries and dragnet searches of homes in which the agents only loosely suspect immigrant families may reside.” ( Id.) Plaintiffs alleged that their own personal experiences (also described in some detail in their pleading) “are typical of the ‘Operation Return to Sender’ home raid modus operandi throughout the state and the nation, which has been comprehensively documented through media reports and first-hand accounts from other victims.” (JA531.)

Specifically, the raids...