Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_19-cv-07623/USCOURTS-cand-3_19-cv-07623-2/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 463
Nature of Suit: Habeas Corpus - Alien Detainee
Cause of Action: 8:1105(a) Aliens: Habeas Corpus to Release INS Detainee

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

ADY MASOOD,

Plaintiff,

v.

WILLIAM P. BARR et al.,

Defendants.

Case No. 19-cv-07623-JD 

ORDER RE PETITION FOR HABEAS

CORPUS

Re: Dkt. No. 1

Habeas petitioner Ady Masood has been held in a county jail since April 10, 2019, while 

pursuing an application for asylum in the United States. Dkt. No. 1. Masood seeks a custody

hearing before an immigration judge, which he has not been afforded during his lengthy detention. 

The federal respondents filed a return to the petition on behalf of the Attorney General, Acting 

Secretary of Homeland Security, and Acting Field Director of the San Francisco Immigration and 

Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office. Dkt. No. 8.1 Masood filed a traverse. Dkt. No. 13. 

Neither side called for a hearing, and the Court determined that the matter was appropriate for 

resolution without oral argument. Dkt. No. 16; Civil L.R. 7-1(b). 

The petition is granted on the first claim for a due process violation under the Fifth 

Amendment of the United States Constitution. The government is ordered to release Masood from 

custody or, within 28 days of the date of this order, provide him with a custody hearing before an 

immigration judge. If the immigration judge has not issued a decision on the hearing within 14

days of the custody hearing, Masood must be released from detention. 

 

1

 Masood also named the Sheriff-Coroner of Yuba County as a respondent, but he has not 

appeared in the case, and it is unclear whether he was served with a summons. In any event, 

neither party has raised an issue about the Sheriff-Coroner. 

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BACKGROUND

The parties do not dispute the salient facts. Masood is 30 years old and a native of Saudi 

Arabia. Dkt. No. 1 at 4. He moved at a young age to the West Bank area in Israel. Id. He is 

deemed to be stateless by the United States. Id. at 1.

In April 2019, Masood arrived at the San Francisco International Airport and immediately 

sought asylum. Id. The asylum application is based on Masood’s allegations of persecution and 

harassment in the West Bank for his political and religious views. Id. at 5. He is a professed 

atheist who has left the Muslim faith, which Masood says incited death threats against him as an 

“infidel.” Id. He was also labeled a “traitor” after trying unsuccessfully to enlist in the United 

States military. Id. The enlistment attempt occurred in 2016 when Masood entered the United 

States on a valid B1 visa. Id. Masood experienced some minor legal difficulties during this visit 

but applied for and was granted a voluntary departure from the United States. Id.; Dkt. No. 8 at 3-

4.

During ICE intake in April 2019, Masood reported several incidents of violence and 

threats to his life. Dkt. No. 1 at 5. An asylum officer determined that he had a credible fear of 

persecution were he to be deported. Id. at 6. Even so, an immigration judge denied his asylum 

application in August 2019 and ordered him removed to Israel or Jordan. Id. Masood has 

challenged the deportation order on multiple grounds before the Bureau of Immigration Appeals, 

and the appeal appears to be pending. Id. at 7-8. Masood has also requested a remand of the 

deportation proceedings based on allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel by his prior 

lawyer. Id. at 8.

Masood has been detained by ICE in the Yuba County Jail since April 10, 2019. Id. at 4. 

The government imposed custody under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1)(B)(ii) (“Section 1225(b)”), which 

allows for the detention of aliens with a credible fear of persecution pending further consideration 

of their asylum applications. In September 2019, Masood filed a parole request to be released to 

the home of a United States citizen who had agreed to sponsor him, but ICE declined the request 

with a slew of entirely conclusory statements, some of which Masood alleges were simply wrong

as a matter of fact. Dkt. No. 1 at 7. A subsequent parole request in November 2019 was met with 

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a summary denial that did not reflect any consideration of evidence submitted by Masood. Dkt. 

No. 13 at 14-15. To date, Masood has been in jail for nearly nine months.

Masood’s habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 presents several claims, all of which 

seek the same relief: an individualized custody hearing before a neutral decisionmaker, or, in the 

alternative, immediate release from custody. The first claim is that his detention without a hearing 

violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Dkt. No. 1 at 13-14. The Court finds that 

Masood is entitled to a custody hearing before an immigration judge, and the other claims are 

reserved for another day as warranted by developments in the case.

DISCUSSION

I. JURISDICTION AND VENUE

Because Masood is in custody in Yuba County, which is outside the boundaries of this 

district, jurisdiction and venue warrant a brief discussion. The Court has jurisdiction under 28 

U.S.C. §§ 1331, 2241 to consider constitutional challenges to Masood’s continued detention under

8 U.S.C. § 1225(b). See Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 688, 121 S.Ct. 2491 (2001) (“§ 2241

habeas corpus proceedings remain available as a forum for statutory and constitutional challenges 

to post-removal-period detention.”); Rodriguez v. Marin, 909 F.3d 252, 256 (9th Cir. 2018) (“[I]t 

is clear we have jurisdiction over petitioners’ claims, as does the district court.”). The federal 

officer respondents do not contend otherwise, or challenge the Court’s subject matter jurisdiction 

in any way.

With respect to personal jurisdiction and venue, Masood alleges that his legal custodian, 

the Acting Field Director of the San Francisco ICE Field Office, is found in this district, and that 

most of the material events occurred here. Dkt. No. 1 at 2. The relief ordered by the Court will be 

directed to the San Francisco ICE office. Personal jurisdiction and venue have been demonstrated 

in this district, and respondents again do not argue for any other result.

II. LEGAL FRAMEWORK

The law governing immigration custody hearings is in a state of development, and a few 

points of clarification are useful. Respondents rely heavily on Jennings v. Rodriguez, 138 S.Ct. 

830 (2018), to argue that Section 1225(b) “requires” that Masood remain in custody until his 

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asylum application proceedings are fully resolved. Dkt. No. 8 at 1. Jennings reversed a decision 

by the Ninth Circuit that construed Section 1225(b) to include boundaries on the length of custody 

and to require hearings. The government also argues that Section 1225(b) is in effect self-limiting 

because custody can be imposed only for the duration of the asylum proceedings, which the 

government says are necessarily finite and will end at some point, “as they always do.” Id. at 9. 

On that score, the government suggests that Masood is at least partly to blame for his continued 

detention because he has chosen to pursue an appeal that will delay a conclusive resolution of his 

asylum application. Id.

The main flaw in the government’s reasoning is that it reads Jennings much too broadly. 

There is no doubt that the Supreme Court disagreed with the Ninth Circuit’s statutory 

interpretation of Section 1225(b), but it is equally true that it did not reach the constitutional due 

process challenge that Masood makes here. The Supreme Court specifically left open the 

constitutional questions attendant to a prolonged detention under Section 1225(b). Jennings, 138

S.Ct. at 851. On remand, the Ninth Circuit also declined to consider the constitutional issues in 

the first instance, or to disturb the preliminary injunction entered by the district court that granted 

individualized custody hearings before a neutral decisionmaker to members of the class. Marin, 

909 F.3d at 255-56. The Ninth Circuit noted that the district court should determine the minimum 

requirements of due process, and “also reassess and reconsider both the clear and convincing 

evidence standard and the six-month bond hearing requirement.” Id. At the same time, the Ninth 

Circuit reaffirmed the principle that lengthy detention without due process is constitutionally 

suspect. Id. at 256 (“We have grave doubts that any statute that allows for arbitrary prolonged 

detention without any process is constitutional or that those who founded our democracy precisely 

to protect against the government’s arbitrary deprivation of liberty would have thought so.”).

Consequently, Jennings does not bar the claim that prolonged detention of an alien without 

individualized review by a neutral decisionmaker may violate due process. For its part, Marin

almost invites the constitutional inquiry by observing that while “due process is a ‘flexible’ 

concept,” Section 1225(b) provides “no process at all.” Marin, 909 F.3d at 255. The door is by 

no means closed, as the government would have it, to Masood’s claim under the Due Process 

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Clause, the fundamental requirement of which is “the opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time 

and in a meaningful manner.” Id. (quoting Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 333, 96 S.Ct. 893 

(1976)) (internal quotations marks omitted). 

The government tries to avert this conclusion by suggesting that Marin should be 

disregarded as wrongly decided, but the point is not well taken. Although the Court is not bound 

by circuit precedent when there is an intervening and clearly irreconcilable Supreme Court 

opinion, see Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 893 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc), Marin was published 

after Jennings, and the government cannot plausibly say that Jennings foreclosed Marin in any 

way, or otherwise displaced our circuit’s case law on the constitutional issues raised by 

immigration detentions. 

III. A CUSTODY HEARING IS REQUIRED

There is no question that Masood is a “person” entitled to “due process of law” before 

being deprived of “liberty.” U.S. Const. amend. V. A well-established line of cases in our circuit 

has applied this due process guarantee to prolonged immigration detentions without a custody

hearing. In Diouf v. Napolitano, 634 F.3d 1081 (9th Cir. 2011) (“Diouf II”), for example, the 

Ninth Circuit concluded that adequate procedural safeguards were required to address “serious 

constitutional concerns raised by continued detention” beyond six months where “release or 

removal is not imminent.” Id. at 1091-92. While Diouf II specifically addressed Section 

1231(a)(6), its reasoning was based on constitutional considerations of due process, and there is no 

reason to treat continued detention under Section 1225(b) any differently. See id. at 1087 

(declining to distinguish between aliens detained under Sections 1226(a) and 1231(a)(6) because 

“[r]egardless of the stage of the proceedings, the same important interest is at stake -- freedom 

from prolonged detention”).

In this case, the due process problems are virtually self-evident. Masood has been in jail 

for nearly nine months, and there is no reasonably certain end to his custody in sight. The 

government cannot predict with any degree of confidence when the BIA appeal will be resolved, 

or what the timeline might be with the remand request. Either event could lead to further 

proceedings that might take up many more months, or even years. This does not redound to 

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Masood’s discredit, as the government would have it. The BIA appeal and remand motion are 

perfectly legitimate proceedings he is legally entitled to pursue, and it ill suits the United States to 

suggest that he could shorten his detention by giving up these rights and abandoning his asylum 

application.

Masood also raises the potential complication created by his “stateless” status. He says, 

without any meaningful opposition by the government, that neither Israel nor Jordan accepts 

deportations of aliens in Masood’s circumstances. Dkt. No. 1 at 6. This creates a possibility that 

Masood might face an indefinite period of confinement as “further consideration” of his asylum 

application could entail a long search for a place of deportation. 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1)(B)(ii).

Other factors weigh in Masood’s favor. He has a non-frivolous appeal before the BIA and 

has diligently prosecuted his asylum application at every turn made known to the Court. He is 

incarcerated in a county jail facility, and has proffered evidence indicating that the Yuba County 

Jail has had serious operational problems. See, e.g., Dkt. Nos. 14-8, 14-9, 14-10. His detention in 

a penal facility is all the more suspect in that he has no record of criminal convictions. 

Respondents try to overcome all of this by highlighting decisions that declined habeas 

relief to an alien detainee, but those cases are not on point. Two cases involved the question of 

additional hearings to aliens who had already had an initial hearing before an IJ. Singh v. Nielsen, 

No. 18-cv-02490-LB, 2018 WL 4110549, at *2-3 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 29, 2018); Soto v. Sessions, No. 

18-cv-02891, 2018 WL 3619727, at *5 (N.D. Cal. July 30, 2018). That is not the situation here. 

The government’s reliance on Gonzalez v. Bonnar (Gonzalez I), No. 18-cv-05321-JSC, 2018 WL 

4849684, at *5 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 4, 2018), is particularly misplaced. Gonzalez was denied 

immediate release on a motion for a temporary restraining order because a hearing in his removal 

proceedings was imminent. See id. The government also overlooks a subsequent decision a few 

months later that granted Gonzalez’s habeas petition and ordered a custody hearing. Gonzalez v. 

Bonnar (Gonzalez II), No. 18-cv-05321-JSC, 2019 WL 330906, at *7 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 25, 2019). 

Even Ramirez v. Sessions, arguably the government’s most relevant citation, counts against 

respondents in holding that “the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires, at some 

point in time, an individualized bond hearing for an arriving alien, such as Petitioner, who is 

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detained pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1)(B)(ii).” No. 18-cv-05188-SVK (N.D. Cal. Jan. 30, 

2019), Dkt. No. 14 at 1-2.

IV. A CUSTODY HEARING IS THE APPROPRIATE RELIEF

The remedy for the due process concerns here is an individualized custody hearing. See 

Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1092; Casas-Castrillon, 535 F.3d 942, 951 (9th Cir. 2008); Tijani v. Willis, 

430 F.3d 1241, 1242 (9th Cir. 2005).

Respondents say this is not so because Masood had functional equivalents in a 

“constellation of measures” that afford “meaningful protection” to his “limited constitutional 

rights.” Dkt. No. 8 at 10. The “measures” are said to include “the removal hearing itself, the 

credible-fear screening process, and the possibility of parole.” Id. 

These events were no substitutes for a custody hearing. That is abundantly clear because 

Masood did not, in fact, get an individualized review of his detention when he appeared before the 

immigration judge in his removal proceedings, or on any other occasion.

2

 Respondents stack the 

deck a bit in their favor by relying on the parole procedures while strongly objecting to judicial 

review of them, Dkt. No. 8 at 11-12, but that too was not a hearing substitute. Even assuming the 

government’s position is correct, which is not without doubt, see Nadarajah v. Gonzales, 443 F.3d 

1069, 1082 (9th Cir. 2006), the record shows no evidence that the parole application process 

provided Masood with a meaningful opportunity to challenge his detention. See Dkt. No. 1 at 7-8; 

Dkt. No. 13 at 1-2, 13-15; Dkt. No. 14 at 3-5; Dkt. Nos. 9-15, 9-17 & 9-18. To the contrary, the 

record indicates that the parole decision was made without a hearing before an immigration judge, 

and solely on the basis of some rather technical inquiries with respect to 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5). 

See Dkt. No. 1 at 7. It was hardly an “opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a 

meaningful manner.” Marin, 909 F.3d at 255 (quoting Mathews, 424 U.S. at 333) (internal 

 

2 Conducting a custody hearing at that time would have appeared reasonable and in the interests of 

justice, as petitioner was unrepresented, yet tasked with gathering evidence, such as affidavits, 

police reports, and other documentation, to support his applications for relief from removal. See

Dkt. No. 14-1 at 15-16. Such circumstances further demonstrate the value of granting additional 

procedural safeguards before continuing to detain an unrepresented alien in a penal facility. See 

Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1092 n.13 (encouraging government “to afford an alien a hearing before an 

immigration judge before the 180-day threshold has been reached if it is practical to do so and it 

has already become clear that the alien is facing prolonged detention” (emphasis in original)).

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quotation marks omitted); see also Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1091 (detention procedures are not 

adequate if they “do not provide for an in-person hearing, they place the burden on the alien rather 

than the government and they do not provide for a decision by a neutral arbiter such as an 

immigration judge”).

When, as here, “detention crosses the six-month threshold and release or removal is not 

imminent,” an alien detainee’s interest in conditional release from detention becomes “profound,” 

and the value of a custody hearing before an immigration judge outweighs any burden imposed on 

the government. Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1091-92. Consequently, Masood is entitled to a custody 

hearing before an immigration judge.

V. THE CLEAR AND CONVINCING EVIDENCE STANDARD APPLIES

To facilitate the hearing, the Court resolves the parties’ dispute about the governing 

standards. In Singh v. Holder, 638 F.3d 1196, 1203-08 (9th Cir. 2011), our circuit applied a clear 

and convincing evidence standard to the showing the government must make at custody hearings

for aliens facing prolonged detention. The government says this standard should not apply here 

because Jennings found no statutory basis for it. Dkt. No. 8 at 12-13 (citing 138 S.Ct. at 848). 

That is not a relevant point. Singh was grounded in the Due Process Clause and the liberty 

interests it protects. Singh, 638 F.3d at 1203-04 (citing Foucha v. Louisiana, 504 U.S. 71, 80 

(1992) (clear and convincing evidence required because “[f]reedom from bodily restraint has 

always been at the core of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause”)). Jennings did not 

undermine this constitutional consideration in any way.

CONCLUSION

The petition for a writ of habeas corpus is granted for claim one. The government is 

directed to release Masood from custody unless, within 28 days of this order, he is granted a

custody hearing before an immigration judge where the government will bear the burden to show 

that petitioner’s continued detention is justified by clear and convincing evidence. If the 

immigration judge’s decision is not issued within 14 days of the custody hearing, Masood must be 

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released from detention. 

The parties are directed to promptly advise the Court of any material developments in the 

immigration proceedings. The Court will set a status conference on the remaining claims in the 

petition as warranted by further developments. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: January 8, 2020

JAMES DONATO

United States District Judge

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