Diaz v. Garland
| Decision Date | 21 November 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20-16245 |
| Parties | AROLDO ALBERTO RODRIGUEZ DIAZ, Petitioner-Appellee, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General; CHAD F. WOLF, DAVID JENNINGS; WENDELL ANDERSON Respondents-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Argued and Submitted December 7, 2021.
Submission Vacated February 9, 2022
Resubmitted November 21, 2022 San Francisco, California
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California No. 4:20-cv-01806-YGR Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, District Judge, Presiding
Sarah S. Wilson (argued), Senior Litigation Counsel; Ernesto Molina, Deputy Director; Jeffrey B. Clark, Acting Assistant Attorney General; Brian Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General; Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington D.C.; for Respondents-Appellants.
Piper C. Akol (argued), Central American Resource Center of Northern California, San Francisco, California, for Petitioner-Appellee.
Kelsey A. Morales (argued), Raha Jorjani, and Evelyn Wise, Alameda County Public Defender's Office, Oakland, California, for Amici Curiae Alameda County Public Defender's Office, the Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, the Legal Aid Society, and the San Francisco Public Defender's Office.
Michael Kaufman and Liga Chia, ACLU Foundation of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; Judy Rabinovitz and Michael Tan, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, New York, New York; Ahilan Arulanantham, UCLA School of Law, Los Angeles, California; Jayashri Srikantiah, Stanford Law School Immigrants' Rights Clinic, Stanford, California; Sean Commons, Sidley Austin LLP, Los Angeles, California; for Amici Curiae ACLU Foundation and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
Before: Kim McLane Wardlaw, Daniel A. Bress, and Patrick J. Bumatay, Circuit Judges.
SUMMARY [*]
Immigration/Detention
Reversing a judgment of the district court that granted Aroldo Alberto Rodriguez Diaz's habeas petition challenging his continued immigration detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), and remanding, the panel held that due process does not require the agency to provide a second bond hearing at which the government bears the burden of proof by clear and convincing evidence.
After his release from incarceration, Rodriguez Diaz was detained pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), which allows the government to detain aliens pending a decision on whether the alien is to be removed. An Immigration Judge held a hearing and denied bond. Approximately 14 months later, Rodriguez Diaz requested a second bond hearing, but the IJ denied the motion, and Rodriguez Diaz appealed to the BIA. Before the BIA could rule, Rodriguez Diaz filed a habeas petition.
The district court granted Rodriguez Diaz's habeas petition in relevant part, ruling that he was constitutionally entitled to another bond hearing, and ordering that the hearing deviate from ordinary agency procedures, in that the government should bear the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that he was a flight risk or a danger to the community. After such a hearing, the IJ granted bond and Rodriguez Diaz was released.
Before this court, Rodriguez Diaz claimed that due process requires the procedures that the district court imposed. The panel explained that this court previously applied the canon of constitutional avoidance to interpret other immigration provisions as providing a statutory right to a bond hearing once detention becomes prolonged. Having implied such a right, this court then concluded that, as a matter of due process, the government must bear the burden of proof in such hearings. However, in Jennings v. Rodriguez, 138 S.Ct. 830 (2018), the Supreme Court concluded that the requirements this court had imposed lacked any arguable statutory foundation and did not reach the constitutional issue.
The panel determined that prior precedent did not resolve Rodriguez Diaz's due process challenge. The panel also observed that the First and Second Circuits have held that the Due Process Clause entitles § 1226(a) detainees to an additional bond hearing after prolonged detention, while the Third and Fourth Circuits are on the other side of the question. Further, the panel explained that the Supreme Court has endorsed the proposition that Congress may make rules as to aliens that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens. Because of this unique treatment of aliens, the government contended that the court should not apply the traditional three-factor balancing test set forth in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976). Because the panel concluded that the Rodriguez Diaz's claims failed even under the Mathews test, which is presumably more favorable to him than the test the government sought, the panel assumed without deciding that Mathews applied here.
As to the first Mathews factor-the private interest affected by the official action-the panel concluded that this factor weighed in Rodriguez Diaz's favor. The panel assumed that Rodriguez Diaz's fourteen-month detention after his first bond hearing was "prolonged," explaining that this court has held that an individual's private interest in freedom from prolonged detention is unquestionably substantial, and observing that the government did not seriously dispute that Rodriguez Diaz had a legitimate and reasonably strong private liberty interest under Mathews.
Taking the third Mathews factor next-the government's interest-the panel concluded that the government clearly has a strong interest in preventing aliens from remaining in the country in violation of law. Because the enforcement of immigration law serves both a domestic law enforcement and foreign relations function, the Supreme Court has specifically instructed that courts must weigh heavily in the balance that control over matters of immigration is a sovereign prerogative, largely within the control of the executive and the legislature.
As to the second Mathews factor-the risk of erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards-the panel concluded that the existing procedures sufficiently protected Rodriguez Diaz's liberty interest and mitigated the risk of erroneous deprivation. The panel explained that the agency's detention decision was subject to numerous levels of review and that these procedures ensured that the risk of erroneous deprivation would be relatively small.
Accordingly, the panel held that § 1226(a)'s procedures satisfy due process, both facially and as applied to Rodriguez Diaz, and remanded for dismissal of the habeas petition.
However, Judge Bumatay concluded that the case would be better decided through the text, structure, and history of the Constitution, rather than through interest balancing. Judge Bumatay concluded that under the original understanding of the Due Process Clause, Rodriguez Diaz's claim must fail; as a matter of text, structure, and history, Congress may authorize the government to detain removable aliens throughout their removal proceedings and nothing in the Due Process Clause requires individualized bond determinations beyond what Congress established in § 1226(a)-let alone under the heightened burden placed on the government by the district court here.
While Judge Wardlaw agreed that the Mathews test was the appropriate legal framework to apply, she could not agree with the majority's balancing of the Mathews factors. Observing that there was no question that the government has a strong interest, Judge Wardlaw wrote that the majority failed to account for the high risk of procedural error and the importance of Rodriguez Diaz's strong individual liberty interest. Explaining that this court's precedent instructs that Fifth Amendment procedural protections should be evaluated with even more scrutiny the longer an individual's liberty is deprived, Judge Wardlaw concluded that after six months, Rodriguez Diaz's liberty interest outweighed the government's interest, and the procedures afforded to him under § 1226(a) deprived him of his bodily liberty in violation of the Due Process Clause.
Aroldo Rodriguez Diaz, a citizen of El Salvador, was detained pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a), which authorizes the federal government to detain aliens pending the completion of their removal proceedings. In accordance with agency procedures, Rodriguez Diaz requested and received a bond hearing before an Immigration Judge (IJ) to determine if his detention was justified. The IJ concluded that Rodriguez Diaz, who had an extensive criminal history, presented a danger to the community due to his gang affiliation. Based on this, the IJ denied release on bond. Rodriguez Diaz now claims that his continued detention was unconstitutional because under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, he is entitled to a second bond hearing at which the government bears the burden of proof by clear and convincing evidence.
We hold that in this case, due process does not require the procedures Rodriguez Diaz would have us impose. The detention of aliens during removal proceedings has long been upheld as a permissible exercise of the political branches' authority over immigration. Section 1226(a) offers substantial procedural protections to detained persons, and Rodriguez Diaz has not shown that these procedures violate due process, either facially or as applied. We therefore reverse the...
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