Tekle v. Blinken
| Decision Date | 29 April 2022 |
| Docket Number | 21-cv-1655 (APM) |
| Parties | TADESSE WELDAY TEKLE, Plaintiff, v. ANTONY BLINKEN et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Columbia |
Plaintiff Tadesse Welday Tekle is a United States citizen who has filed visa applications on behalf of his wife and son, both citizens of Ethiopia. Pet. for Writ of Mandamus & Compl for Inj. Relief., ECF No. 1 [hereinafter Compl.], ¶ 1. A person seeking to sponsor foreign relatives for immigrant visas must file a Form I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative) with the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (“USCIS”). See 8 U.S.C. § 1154; 8 C.F.R. § 204.1(a)(1) (2022). If USCIS approves the petition, then the petition is sent to a State Department processing center. 8 C.F.R. § 204.2(a)(3) (2022). The foreign relatives must then submit another application and await an interview with a consular officer. 22 C.F.R §§ 42.61, 42.62 (2022). After the interview generally speaking, “the consular officer must [either] issue the visa, [or] refuse” it. Id. § 42.81(a).
Plaintiff alleges that he properly filed Form I-130s on behalf of his wife and son in July 2018. Compl. ¶ 12. USCIS approved both petitions in December of that same year. Id. His wife had an interview in July 2019 at the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia, during which, Plaintiff asserts, she truthfully responded to all questions and provided all information requested. Id. ¶ 14. However, her and her son's applications have lingered in “administrative processing” since the interview. Id. ¶ 15 (internal quotation marks omitted). Plaintiff alleges, given the passage of time, that Defendants “are unlawfully withholding or unreasonably delaying action” on the applications and that they “have failed to carry out the adjudicative functions delegated to them by law.” Id. ¶ 19. Plaintiff ultimately requests an order by this court “requiring Defendants to complete the adjudication process.” Id.
Plaintiff's action asserts two claims: one under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. § 701, and another under the Mandamus Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1361. He brings this action against a variety of Defendants, naming Secretary of State Antony Blinken; Acting Director of USCIS Tracy Renaud; Attorney General Merrick Garland; Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) Alejandro Mayorkas; Acting Legal Adviser of the Department of State Richard C. Visek; Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) Director Christopher Wray; Acting Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Consular Affairs Ian G. Brownlee; and Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia David Renz (collectively, “the Government”). Compl. ¶¶ 6-10. The Government has moved to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See Defs.' Mot. to Dismiss & Mem. in Supp. Thereof, ECF No. 4 [hereinafter Defs.' Mot.]. Along with his opposition, Plaintiff filed a motion for summary judgment. See Pl.'s Mot. for Summ. J., ECF No. 6 [hereinafter Pl.'s Mot.]; see also Pl.'s Mem. of P. & A. in Opp'n to Defs.' Mot. & in Supp. of Pl.'s Mot. for Summ. J., ECF No. 5 [hereinafter Pl.'s Opp'n].
For the reasons that follow, Defendants' motion to dismiss is granted and Plaintiff's motion for summary judgment is denied as moot.
When deciding a motion under Rule 12(b)(1), a court must accept all well-pleaded factual allegations in the complaint as true. See Jerome Stevens Pharm., Inc. v. FDA., 402 F.3d 1249, 1253 (D.C. Cir. 2005). Because the court has “an affirmative obligation to ensure that it is acting within the scope of its jurisdictional authority, ” however, the factual allegations in the complaint “will bear closer scrutiny in resolving a 12(b)(1) motion than in resolving a 12(b)(6) motion for failure to state a claim.” Grand Lodge of Fraternal Ord. of Police v. Ashcroft, 185 F.Supp.2d 9, 13-14 (D.D.C. 2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). To that end, the “court may consider such materials outside the pleadings as it deems appropriate to resolve the question whether it has jurisdiction to hear the case.” Scolaro v. D.C. Bd. of Elections & Ethics, 104 F.Supp.2d 18, 22 (D.D.C. 2000). Thus, “where necessary, the court may consider the complaint supplemented by undisputed facts evidenced in the record, or the complaint supplemented by undisputed facts plus the court's resolution of disputed facts.” See Coal. for Underground Expansion v. Mineta, 333 F.3d 193, 198 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (internal quotation marks omitted).
To survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), “a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). A claim is facially plausible when “the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id. The factual allegations in the complaint need not be “detailed, ” but the Federal Rules demand more than “an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Id. In evaluating a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), the court must accept a plaintiff's factual allegations as true and “construe the complaint in favor of the plaintiff, who must be granted the benefit of all inferences that can be derived from the facts alleged.” Hettinga v. United States, 677 F.3d 471, 476 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). The court need not accept as true either “legal conclusion[s] couched as . . . factual allegation[s], ” Papasan v. Allain, 478 U.S. 265, 286 (1986), or “inferences . . . unsupported by the facts set out in the complaint, ” Kowal v. MCI Commc'ns Corp., 16 F.3d 1271, 1276 (D.C. Cir. 1994). If the facts as alleged fail to establish that a plaintiff has stated a claim upon which relief can be granted, then a court must grant the defendant's Rule 12(b)(6) motion. See Am. Chemistry Council, Inc. v. U.S. Dep't of Health & Hum. Servs., 922 F.Supp.2d 56, 61 (D.D.C. 2013).
The Government moves to dismiss on three grounds: (1) Plaintiff “names a host of officials that cannot provide Plaintiff the sought-after relief”; (2) Plaintiff's claims are subject to the consular non-reviewability doctrine; and (3) with regard to the merits of the case, the delay “is not unreasonable as a matter of law.” Def's Mot. at 7.[1] Because the court agrees with the first and third of these arguments, it does not address consular non-reviewability. See Baan Rao Thai Rest. v. Pompeo, 985 F.3d 1020, 1027 (D.C. Cir. 2021) ()
A.
Plaintiff names as Defendants officials from USCIS, DHS, the Department of Justice, and the FBI. USCIS and DHS, however, have completed their portions of Plaintiff's family's visaapplication review by approving his wife and son's initial applications and thus no longer have any role in visa processing. As for DOJ and the FBI, neither agency has any evident role in the Tekle family's visa processing. Because Plaintiff's injuries cannot be traced to any of these agencies, Plaintiff lacks standing as to them. See, e.g., Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992) ().
Plaintiff's only response to shore up standing against these Defendants is that “the USCIS policy Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CAARP)” is “[a]t issue.” Pl.'s Opp'n at 7. But the CAARP program is nowhere mentioned in his Complaint, and “[i]t is axiomatic that a complaint may not be amended by the briefs in opposition to a motion to dismiss.” Arbitraje Casa De Cambio, S.A. DE C.V. v. U.S. Postal Serv., 297 F.Supp.2d 165, 170 (D.D.C. 2003) (internal quotation marks omitted). As a result, the court dismisses the DHS, USCIS, DOJ, and FBI officials from this action.
B.
The court now turns to the merits of Plaintiff's unreasonable-delay claim under the standard for motions to dismiss brought under Rule 12(b)(6). Plaintiff claims that the Government has unreasonably delayed adjudicating his wife's visa application and seeks relief for that delay under the APA. See Compl. ¶¶ 24-35. The APA “imposes a general but nondiscretionary duty upon an administrative agency to pass upon a matter presented to it ‘within a reasonable time,' and authorizes a reviewing court to ‘compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.'” Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Council, Inc. v. Norton, 336 F.3d 1094, 1099 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (quoting 5 U.S.C. §§ 555(b), 706(1)). “There is no per se rule as to how long is too long to wait for agency action.” In re Am. Rivers & Idaho Rivers United, 372 F.3d 413, 419 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks omitted). Instead, courts apply the six factors set forth in Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. FCC (TRAC), 750 F.2d 70, 80 (D.C. Cir. 1984):
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