IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 11-50792

JESUS C. HERNANDEZ, Individually and as the surviving father of Sergio 

Adrian Hernandez Guereca, and as Successor-in-Interest to the Estate of 

Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca; MARIA GUADALUPE GUERECA 

BENTACOUR, Individually and as the surviving mother of Sergio Adrian 

Hernandez Guereca, and as Successor-in-Interest to the Estate of Sergio 

Adrian Hernandez Guereca, 

 Plaintiffs - Appellants

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF 

HOMELAND SECURITY; UNITED STATES BUREAU OF CUSTOMS AND 

BORDER PROTECTION; UNITED STATES BORDER PATROL; UNITED 

STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT AGENCY; 

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 

 Defendants - Appellees

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONS w/ 12-50217

JESUS C. HERNANDEZ, Individually and as the surviving father of Sergio 

Adrian Hernandez Guereca, and as Successor-in-Interest to the Estate of

Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca; MARIA GUADALUPE GUERECA 

BENTACOUR, Individually and as the surviving mother of Sergio Adrian 

Hernandez Guereca, and as Successor-in-Interest to the Estate of Sergio 

Adrian Hernandez, 

 Plaintiffs - Appellants 

v. 

JESUS MESA, JR., 

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

April 24, 2015

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

 Defendant - Appellee

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONS w/ 12-50301

JESUS C. HERNANDEZ, Individually and as the surviving father of Sergio 

Adrian Hernandez Guereca, and as Successor-in-Interest to the Estate of 

Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca; MARIA GUADALUPE GUERECA 

BENTACOUR, Individually and as the surviving mother of Sergio Adrian 

Hernandez Guereca, and as Successor-in-Interest to the Estate of Sergio 

Adrian Hernandez, 

 Plaintiffs - Appellants 

v. 

RAMIRO CORDERO; VICTOR M. MANJARREZ, JR., 

 Defendants - Appellees

Appeals from the United States District Court 

for the Western District of Texas

Before STEWART, Chief Judge, and JOLLY, DAVIS, JONES, SMITH,

DENNIS, CLEMENT, PRADO, OWEN, ELROD, SOUTHWICK, HAYNES, 

GRAVES, HIGGINSON, and COSTA, Circuit Judges.*

* Judge DeMoss was a member of the panel and, as a senior judge, elected to 

participate in the en banc proceedings pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 46(c) and 5th Circuit Rule 

35.6. Although Judge DeMoss participated in the oral argument and the court’s 

deliberations, he subsequently retired from the court, effective April 16, 2015. Before 

retiring, Judge DeMoss authored the following special concurrence, which would have been 

issued if he were still a member of the court:

2

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 2 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

PER CURIAM:

We rehear this matter en banc, see Hernandez v. United States, 771 F.3d 

818 (5th Cir. 2014) (per curiam) (on petitions for rehearing en banc), to resolve 

whether, under facts unique to this or any other circuit, the individual defendants in these consolidated appeals are entitled to qualified immunity. Unanimously concluding that the plaintiffs fail to allege a violation of the Fourth 

Amendment, and that the Fifth Amendment right asserted by the plaintiffs 

was not clearly established at the time of the complained-of incident, we affirm 

the judgment of dismissal.

The facts and course of proceedings are accurately set forth in the panel 

majority opinion of Judge Prado, Hernandez v. United States, 757 F.3d 249, 

255−57 (5th Cir. 2014). We conclude that the panel opinion rightly affirms the 

dismissal of Hernandez’s claims against the United States, id. at 257–59, and 

against Agent Mesa’s supervisors, id. at 280, and we therefore REINSTATE 

Parts I, II, and VI of that opinion. We additionally hold that pursuant to 

United States v. Verdugo–Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990), Hernandez, a 

Mexican citizen who had no “significant voluntary connection” to the United 

States, id. at 271, and who was on Mexican soil at the time he was shot, cannot 

assert a claim under the Fourth Amendment.

The remaining issue for the en banc court is properly described as 

whether “the Fifth Amendment . . . protect[s] a non-citizen with no connections 

HAROLD R. DeMOSS, JR., Circuit Judge, concurring in part and concurring 

in the judgment:

I concur in the en banc court’s reinstatement of Parts I, II, and VI of the 

panel’s opinion. Furthermore, I concur in the en banc court’s assessment that 

United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990), precludes a Fourth 

Amendment claim on the facts of this case. As to the Fifth Amendment claim, 

I concur in the judgment of the en banc court for the reasons stated in my 

dissent from the panel opinion. See Hernandez v. United States, 757 F.3d 249, 

281-82 (5th Cir. 2014) (DeMoss, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

3

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 3 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

to the United States who suffered an injury in Mexico where the United States 

has no formal control or de facto sovereignty.” Id. at 281−82 (DeMoss, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). To underscore the seriousness of the 

tragic incident under review, we elaborate on that description only to note that 

the injury was the death of a teenaged Mexican national from a gunshot fired 

by a Border Patrol agent standing on U.S. soil.

To decide the assertion of qualified immunity made by defendant Agent 

Mesa, regarding the plaintiffs’ Fifth Amendment claim, the court avails itself 

of the latitude afforded by Pearson v. Callahan: “The judges of the . . . courts 

of appeals should be permitted to exercise their sound discretion in deciding 

which of the two prongs of the qualified immunity analysis should be addressed

first in light of the circumstances in the particular case at hand.” 555 U.S. 223, 

236 (2009) (overruling Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001)).

The prongs referred to are familiar: “First, a court must decide whether 

the facts . . . alleged . . . make out a violation of a constitutional right. . . . 

Second, if [so], the court must decide whether the right at issue was ‘clearly 

established’ at the time of [the] alleged misconduct.” Id. at 232. “Qualified 

immunity is applicable unless [both prongs are satisfied].” Id.

The panel opinion correctly describes the substantive-due-process claim 

as “that Agent Mesa showed callous disregard for Hernandez’s Fifth Amendment rights by using excessive, deadly force when Hernandez was unarmed 

and presented no threat.” Hernandez, 757 F.3d at 267. The question is 

whether, under the unique facts and circumstances presented here, that right 

was “clearly established.”

The Supreme Court has carefully admonished that we are “not to define 

clearly established law at a high level of generality.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 

S. Ct. 2074, 2084 (2011). To the contrary, a right is clearly established only 

where “it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful 

4

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 4 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

in the situation he confronted.” Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 199 (2004)

(per curiam) (quoting Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202) (internal quotation marks 

omitted). The question here is whether the general prohibition of excessive 

force applies where the person injured by a U.S. official standing on U.S. soil 

is an alien who had no significant voluntary connection to, and was not in, the 

United States when the incident occurred. No case law in 2010, when this 

episode occurred, reasonably warned Agent Mesa that his conduct violated the 

Fifth Amendment.

Although the en banc court is somewhat divided on the question of 

whether Agent Mesa’s conduct violated the Fifth Amendment, the court, with 

the benefit of further consideration and en banc supplemental briefing and oral 

argument, is unanimous in concluding that any properly asserted right was 

not clearly established to the extent the law requires. The strongest authority 

for the plaintiffs may be Boumediene v. Bush, which addressed whether the 

Suspension Clause of the U.S. Constitution applied to aliens detained outside 

the United States at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 553 U.S. 

723, 732–33 (2008). Although the Court drew on cases from contexts other 

than habeas corpus, see id. at 755–64 (discussing the Court’s precedents on 

“the Constitution’s extraterritorial application,” including, inter alia, the

Insular Cases, In re Ross, 140 U.S. 453 (1891), Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957), 

and Verdugo–Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259), it expressly limited its holding to the 

facts before it, see id. at 795 (“Our decision today holds only that petitioners 

before us are entitled to seek the writ; that the [Detainee Treatment Act] 

review procedures are an inadequate substitute for habeas corpus; and that 

petitioners in these cases need not exhaust the review procedures in the Court 

of Appeals before proceeding with their habeas actions in the District Court.”). 

Accordingly, nothing in that opinion presages, with the directness that the 

“clearly established” standard requires, whether the Court would extend the 

5

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 5 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

territorial reach of a different constitutional provision—the Fifth 

Amendment—and would do so where the injury occurs not on land long 

controlled by the United States, but on soil that is indisputably foreign and 

beyond the United States’ territorial sovereignty. By deciding this case on a 

ground on which the court is in consensus, we bypass that issue by giving 

allegiance to “the general rule of constitutional avoidance.” Callahan, 555 U.S. 

at 241.

“There are cases in which it is plain that a constitutional right is not 

clearly established but far from obvious whether in fact there is such a right.” 

Id. at 237. Reasonable minds can differ on whether Boumediene may someday 

be explicitly extended as the plaintiffs urge. That is the chore of the first prong 

of the qualified-immunity test, which we do not address.

The alleged right at issue was not clearly established, under these facts, 

in 2010. 

The judgment of dismissal is AFFIRMED.

6

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 6 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge, joined by SMITH, CLEMENT, and OWEN, 

Circuit Judges, concurring:

The court has unfortunately taken the path of least resistance. We hold 

unanimously that Agent Mesa has qualified immunity from this suit for a Fifth 

Amendment substantive due process violation because he did not violate any 

clearly established rights flowing from that Amendment. Pearson v. Callahan, 

555 U.S. 223, 236, 129 S. Ct. 808, 818 (2009). This compromise simply delays 

the day of reckoning until another appellate panel revisits non-citizen tort 

claims for excessive force resting on extraterritorial application of the United 

States Constitution. Ongoing incursions across our national borders and our 

nation’s applications of force abroad ensure that other lawsuits will be 

pursued. We should discourage this litigation before it takes root. 

Because it is clear that United States constitutional rights do not extend 

to aliens who (a) lack any connection to the United States and (b) are injured 

on foreign soil, I would also resolve this appeal on the first prong of qualified 

immunity analysis. See id. at 236, 129 S. Ct. at 818 (“In some cases, a 

discussion of why the relevant facts do not violate clearly established law may 

make it apparent that in fact the relevant facts do not make out a 

constitutional violation at all.”).1

Whether a constitutional violation occurred here is a straightforward 

inquiry with a definite answer. First, if the plaintiffs have a constitutional 

claim at all, it arises under the Fourth Amendment, not the Fifth. See Graham 

v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 394, 109 S. Ct. 1865, 1870-71 (1989). This en banc 

court re-confirms, however, that the Fourth Amendment protects only aliens 

1 The en banc court did not consider whether, even if a constitutional claim had been 

stated, a tort remedy should be crafted under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of 

Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S. Ct. 1999 (1971). Our en banc opinion neither 

assumes nor decides that question.

7

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 7 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

with “significant voluntary connection[s]” to this country. United States v. 

Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 271, 110 S. Ct. 1056, 1064 (1990). Because 

Hernandez had no such prior connections, the Fourth Amendment claim fails. 

Additionally, substantive due process under the Fifth Amendment does 

not offer a fallback claim here, not least because of the expressly limited reach 

of the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 

128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008). Judge DeMoss’s dissent from the panel opinion aptly 

expressed incredulity about extraterritorial application of the Fifth 

Amendment:

If the fact that the United States exerts and has exerted 

powerful influence over northern Mexico, justifies application of 

the Fifth Amendment in a strip along the border, how wide is that 

strip? Is the Fifth Amendment applicable in all of Ciudad Juarez 

or even the entire state of Chihuahua? Ultimately, the majority’s 

approach devolves into a line drawing game which is entirely 

unnecessary because there is a border between the United States 

and Mexico.

Hernandez v. United States, 757 F.3d 249, 281 (5th Cir. 2014) (DeMoss, J., 

concurring in part and dissenting in part) (internal quotation marks and 

citation omitted).

I also feel obliged to comment on the plaintiffs’ Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) 

claim against the United States, which has been rejected by the panel, by the 

unanimous compromise en banc opinion, and indeed by every other circuit 

court of appeals.2 A concurring opinion here arguably supports the assertion 

2 See Princz v. Fed. Republic of Germany, 26 F.3d 1166, 1174 (D.C. Cir. 1994)

(rejecting the argument that jus cogens violations implicitly waive sovereign immunity under 

the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act); Siderman de Blake v. Republic of Argentina, 

965 F.2d 699, 718-19 (9th Cir. 1992) (same); Goldstar (Panama) S.A. v. United States, 

967 F.2d 965, 968-69 (4th Cir. 1992) (rejecting plaintiffs’ argument that the ATS waived the 

United States’ sovereign immunity); Sanchez-Espinoza v. Reagan, 770 F.2d 202, 207 

(D.C. Cir. 1985) (holding that “[t]he Alien Tort Statute itself is not a waiver of sovereign 

immunity”). 

8

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 8 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

of nebulous claims for violations of “jus cogens” and blithely suggests that the 

United States’ sovereign immunity may be ineffective in American courts 

against such claims. Among the many troubling implications of the separate 

opinion, it turns on its head the Supreme Court’s obvious reluctance to expand 

federal judges’ authority to import customary international law theories into 

domestic tort law without careful articulation and severe limitations or 

Congressional action. See Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 732, 

124 S. Ct. 2739, 2765-66 (2004) (plaintiff’s claim for “arbitrary arrest and 

detention” failed to state a violation of the law of nations with requisite 

“definite content and acceptance among civilized nations”); Kiobel v. Royal 

Dutch Petroleum Co., ___ U.S. ___, 133 S. Ct. 1659, 1669 (2013) (presumption 

against extraterritoriality applies to Alien Tort Statute).

I. The Fourth Amendment, not the Fifth, Controls

The plaintiffs characterized their claims as arising under either the Fifth 

or the Fourth Amendment. But on these facts, they can only have a Fourth 

Amendment claim. Constitutional rights are not interchangeable. When a 

litigant asserts multiple constitutional claims arising from the same conduct, 

we must “identify[] the specific constitutional right allegedly infringed . . . .” 

Graham, 490 U.S. at 394, 109 S. Ct. at 1870. If it becomes apparent that “a 

particular Amendment ‘provides an explicit textual source of constitutional 

protection’ against a particular sort of government behavior, ‘that Amendment, 

not the more generalized notion of substantive due process, must be the guide 

for analyzing these claims.’ ” Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 273, 

114 S. Ct. 807, 813 (1994) (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 395, 109 S. Ct. at 1871) 

(internal quotation marks and footnote omitted). In essence, the specific 

trumps the general. This is especially true when a plaintiff brings both Fourth 

and Fifth Amendment claims asserting law enforcement misconduct. The 

Court has emphatically stated that “all claims that law enforcement officers 

9

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 9 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

have used excessive force—deadly or not—in the course of an arrest, 

investigatory stop, or other ‘seizure’ of a free citizen should be analyzed under 

the Fourth Amendment and its ‘reasonableness’ standard, rather than under 

a ‘substantive due process’ approach.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 395, 109 S. Ct. at 

1871 (emphasis in original). Accordingly, substantive due process analysis is 

appropriate only if the plaintiffs’ claim is not “covered by” the Fourth 

Amendment. Cnty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 843, 118 S. Ct. 1708, 

1715 (1998) (applying substantive due process where the passenger of a 

motorcyclist being pursued by police was killed).3 

Agent Mesa undoubtedly seized Hernandez. A seizure occurs “when 

there is a governmental termination of freedom of movement through means 

intentionally applied.” Brower v. Cnty. of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 596-97, 

109 S. Ct. 1378, 1381 (1989) (emphasis omitted). Law enforcement shootings 

are also covered by the Fourth Amendment because “there can be no question 

that apprehension by the use of deadly force is a seizure[.]” Tennessee v. 

Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 7, 105 S. Ct. 1694, 1699 (1985). The plaintiffs’ complaint 

alleges that Agent Mesa intentionally shot and killed Hernandez, thus 

terminating his “freedom of movement through means intentionally applied.”

Brower, 489 U.S. at 596-97, 109 S. Ct. at 1381. Under governing law, if the 

plaintiffs have any claim at all, it arises from the Fourth, not the Fifth 

Amendment.

3 The plaintiffs argue that Graham is inapplicable here because its rule only applies 

to “free citizens.” Graham does say all “seizure[s] of [] free citizen[s] should be analyzed 

under the Fourth Amendment . . . .” 490 U.S. at 395, 109 S. Ct. at 1871. But the Court could 

not have intended to give non-citizens the ability to pursue claims under the more nebulous 

“substantive due process” standard, while limiting American citizens to the Fourth 

Amendment’s reasonableness test. Nothing in Graham (other than the above quoted 

language) supports such an inference. Taken in context, Graham’s reference to “free citizens”

was intended to distinguish the scope of protection for “free citizens” from the rights accorded 

pretrial detainees (under the Fourteenth Amendment) and criminal convicts (under the 

Eighth Amendment). See Lewis, 523 U.S. at 843, 118 S. Ct. at 1715.

10

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 10 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

II. The Non-Extraterritoriality of the Fourth Amendment

Although the Fourth Amendment “covers” the plaintiffs’ claim, 

Hernandez did not automatically enjoy its protection. The Constitution does 

not protect all people in all places. Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 74, 77 S. Ct. 1222, 

1260 (1957) (Harlan, J., concurring) (“[T]here are provisions in the 

Constitution which do not necessarily apply in all circumstances in every 

foreign place.”). This en banc court recognizes that the Supreme Court has 

foreclosed extraterritorial application of the Fourth Amendment to aliens 

where the violation occurs on foreign soil and the alien plaintiff lacks any prior 

substantial connection to the United States. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. at

261, 110 S. Ct. at 1059. 

Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in Verdugo-Urquidez that the Fourth 

Amendment’s text refers to the right of “the people” to be free from 

unreasonable searches. “The people,” in turn, “refers to a class of persons who 

are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient 

connection with this country to be considered part of that community.” 

Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 265, 110 S. Ct. at 1061. Turning to the 

Amendment’s history, the Court explained that “[t]he driving force behind the 

adoption of the Amendment . . . was widespread hostility among the former 

colonists to the issuance of writs of assistance[.]” Id. at 266, 110 S. Ct. at 1061. 

The Amendment’s purpose, “was to protect the people of the United States 

against arbitrary action by their own Government[.]” Id. In other words, the 

Fourth Amendment “restrict[s] searches and seizures which might be 

conducted by the United States in domestic matters.” Id. Contemporary 

historical understanding, the Court continued, confirmed this reading. Id. at 

267, 110 S. Ct. at 1061-62. As a result, the Court held, “aliens receive 

constitutional protections when they have come within the territory of the 

11

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 11 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

United States and developed substantial connections with this country.” Id. at 

271, 110 S. Ct. at 1064.

Despite this seemingly clear pronouncement, critics, including the 

plaintiffs, claim that the substantial connections test is not—and never was—

the law. Because Justice Kennedy concurred and his opinion allegedly differs 

from the purported majority, the skeptics argue, only four justices concurred 

in Chief Justice Rehnquist’s opinion and it is nonbinding. Even if that were 

not the case, the skeptics continue, Verdugo-Urquidez’s substantial 

connections test was replaced by the majority opinion in Boumediene. This 

court disagrees. 

Foremost, Justice Kennedy joined the majority in full, not just in 

judgment. Supreme Court justices know the difference between the types of 

joinder. Justice Kennedy began his concurrence by stating: “Although some 

explanation of my views is appropriate given the difficulties of this case, I do 

not believe they depart in fundamental respects from the opinion of the Court, 

which I join.” Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 275, 110 S. Ct. at 1066 (Kennedy, 

J., concurring) (emphasis added). If we take Justice Kennedy at his word—as 

we must—he undoubtedly joined the majority opinion, and the substantial 

connections test controls. 

In any event, the substance of his concurrence does not undermine the 

substantial connections test—his opinion reinforces it. Concededly, Justice 

Kennedy did not rely on the Fourth Amendment’s reference to “the people”; in 

his view, “[t]he force of the Constitution is not confined because it was brought 

into being by certain persons who gave their immediate assent to its terms.”4 

4 This statement has led at least one court to refer to Justice Rehnquist’s reasoning, 

specifically his reliance on the Fourth Amendment’s text, as only adopted by a plurality. See 

Lamont v. Woods, 948 F.2d 825, 835 (2d Cir. 1991) (explaining that “[t]o a plurality of the 

Court, the use of the phrase ‘the people’ suggested that the Framers of the Constitution 

12

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 12 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

Id. at 276, 110 S. Ct. at 1067. Instead, the Constitution’s application abroad 

“depend[s] . . . on general principles of interpretation, not on an inquiry as to 

who formed the Constitution or a construction that some rights are mentioned 

as being those of ‘the people.’ ” Id., 110 S. Ct. at 1067. Applying such general 

interpretive principles, Justice Kennedy noted the Court’s historic reliance on 

the distinction between citizens and aliens in determining the Constitution’s 

reach. Id. at 275, 110 S. Ct. at 1066. “The distinction between citizens and 

aliens,” he explained, “follows from the undoubted proposition that the 

Constitution does not create, nor do general principles of law create, any 

juridical relation between our country and some undefined, limitless class of 

noncitizens who are beyond our territory.” Id., 110 S. Ct. at 1066. This 

traditional distinction, Justice Kennedy noted, runs through the Court’s cases. 

Id., 110 S. Ct. at 1066. 

For Justice Kennedy, the practical consequences of applying the Fourth 

Amendment extraterritorially also supports the Court’s test. “The absence of 

local judges or magistrates available to issue warrants, the differing and 

perhaps unascertainable conceptions of reasonableness and privacy that 

prevail abroad, and the need to cooperate with foreign officials all indicate that 

the Fourth Amendment . . . should not apply [abroad].” Verdugo-Urquidez, 

494 U.S. at 278, 110 S. Ct. at 1068 (Kennedy, J., concurring). “For this reason, 

in addition to the other persuasive justifications stated by the Court,” Justice 

Kennedy “agree[d] that no violation of the Fourth Amendment [ ] occurred[.]” 

intended the amendment to apply only to those persons who were part of or substantially 

connected to the national community”). But it does not throw Chief Justice Rehnquist’s 

holding, that only aliens with a substantial connection to the United States have 

constitutional rights, into doubt. See Ibrahim v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 669 F.3d 983, 996 

(9th Cir. 2012). 

13

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 13 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

Id., 110 S. Ct. at 1068. Justice Kennedy’s concurrence reinforces rather than 

undermines Chief Justice Rehnquist’s majority opinion.5

III. The Non-Extraterritoriality of the Fifth Amendment6

After agreeing that Verdugo-Urquidez forecloses the plaintiffs’ Fourth

Amendment claim, this court should have been quick to conclude that their 

alternate Fifth Amendment claim is equally thwarted by Johnson v. 

Eisentrager. 339 U.S. 763, 70 S. Ct. 936 (1950). The Supreme Court held in 

Johnson, and has reiterated since then, that as a general matter aliens outside 

the sovereign territory of the United States are not entitled to Fifth 

Amendment rights. Id. at 782-85, 70 S. Ct. at 945-47. Verdugo-Urquidez

described Johnson as unambiguously “reject[ing] the claim that aliens are 

entitled to Fifth Amendment rights outside the sovereign territory of the 

5 Since the Court decided Verdugo-Urquidez, courts have applied the substantial 

connections test. See Ibrahim, 669 F.3d at 997 (applying the significant voluntary connection 

test to an alien’s First and Fifth Amendment claims); Kiyemba v. Obama, 555 F.3d 1022, 

1026 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (explaining that the “[D]ue [P]rocess [C]lause does not apply to aliens 

without property or presence in the sovereign territory of the United States”), vacated and 

remanded, 559 U.S. 131, 130 S. Ct. 1235 (2010), reinstated in relevant part, 605 F.3d 1046 

(D.C. Cir. 2010); United States v. Emmanuel, 565 F.3d 1324, 1331 (11th Cir. 2009) (holding 

that the Fourth Amendment does not protect a Bahamian citizen with no substantial 

connections to the U.S.); Atamirzayeva v. United States, 524 F.3d 1320, 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2008) 

(holding that a foreign citizen with no substantial connections to the U.S. has no claim under 

the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause); United States v. Barona, 56 F.3d 1087, 1093-94 

(9th Cir. 1995) (explaining that “with regard to foreign searches involving aliens with ‘no 

voluntary connection’ to the United States, [ ] the Fourth Amendment is simply 

inapplicable”).

6 The plaintiffs argue without conviction that because Agent Mesa’s conduct occurred 

solely on U.S. soil, this case does not require extraterritorial application of the Constitution. 

In both Verdugo-Urquidez and Sosa, however, the Supreme Court treated the cases as 

involving extraterritorial violations despite the presence of actions on American soil that 

preceded the foreign incidents. This case is no different. Indeed, the hoary principle of lex 

loci delicti (“law of the place of injury”) historically required the application of the law at the 

place where the last act causing injury (here, the bullet hitting Hernandez) occurred. Cf.

Sosa, 542 U.S. at 708-711, 124 S. Ct. at 2752-2754 (interpreting the Federal Tort Claims Act 

foreign country exception, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(k), to apply where the injury occurred, not where 

the last act or omission causing injury occurred).

14

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 14 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

United States.” Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 269, 110 S. Ct. at 1063. 

Johnson was similarly described by the Court in Zadvydas v. Davis, 

533 U.S. 678, 693, 121 S. Ct. 2491, 2500 (2001); see also Castro v. Cabrera, 

742 F.3d 595, 599 n.5 (5th Cir. 2014) (noting that Johnson “reject[ed] 

extraterritorial application of the Fifth Amendment”). This court is not at 

liberty to “underrule” Supreme Court decisions when the Court has explicitly 

failed to overrule its own precedents. Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am.

Exp., Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484, 109 S. Ct. 1917, 1921-22 (1989). Consequently, 

the plaintiffs’ substantive due process claim is barred by these precedents. 

The plaintiffs’ implicit position is that Johnson was de facto overruled by 

Boumediene, 553 U.S. 723, 128 S. Ct. 2229, and Johnson’s refusal to apply the 

Fifth Amendment extraterritorially was replaced by the three-part test 

inaugurated in Boumediene.7 As I have noted, this court squarely rejects the 

plaintiffs’ argument in regard to the Fourth Amendment. The diffidence with 

regard to the Fifth Amendment must stem from Boumediene's discussion and 

theoretical reframing of Johnson. See Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 766, 128 S. Ct. 

at 2259. Boumediene and Johnson admittedly share the factual similarity that 

enemy aliens incarcerated outside the continental United States were 

petitioning for habeas corpus review of their incarceration by the United States

military. From the standpoint of this inferior court, however, reading tea 

leaves as to how far the Supreme Court plans ultimately to press 

extraterritorial application of constitutional provisions is a useless exercise. 

Until the Court overrules Johnson, we remain bound by its holding.

7 That test requires courts to examine “(1) the citizenship and status of the detainee 

and the adequacy of the process through which that status determination was made; (2) the 

nature of the sites where apprehension and then detention took place; and (3) the practical 

obstacles inherent in resolving the prisoner's entitlement to the writ.” Boumediene, 553 U.S. 

at 766, 128 S. Ct. at 2259.

15

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 15 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

To be more precise, Boumediene was expressly limited to holding that 

the Suspension Clause, art. I, § 9, cl. 2 of the Constitution, applies to enemy 

combatants detained in the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military facility. 

Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 771, 128 S. Ct. at 2262. The significance of both the 

“Great Writ” and the United States’ plenary control at Guantanamo was 

equally critical to the Court’s holding. The Court stated: “In the system 

conceived by the Framers the writ had a centrality that must inform proper 

interpretation of the Suspension Clause,” and cited Blackstone, who called it 

the “bulwark of our liberties.” Id. at 739, 742, 128 S. Ct. at 2244, 2246 (citing 

1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *137). The Court also held that the concerns 

regarding separation of powers “have particular bearing upon the Suspension 

Clause question in the cases now before us, for the writ of habeas corpus is 

itself an indispensable mechanism for monitoring the separation of powers.” 

Id. at 765, 128 S. Ct. at 2259. With respect to the unique circumstances at 

Guantanamo, the Court variously stated that the Government has “total 

military and civil control”; “complete jurisdiction and control”; “de facto

sovereignty”; and had “complete and uninterrupted control of the bay for over 

100 years.” Id. at 747, 755, & 764, 128 S. Ct. at 2248, 2253, & 2258.

Boumediene fashioned a test that it claimed to derive from past decisions 

that considered the extraterritorial reach of other constitutional provisions. 

See Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 760, 128 S. Ct. at 2256 (citing In re Ross, 140 U.S. 

453, 11 S. Ct. 897 (1891) (Fifth and Sixth Amendments)); id. at 762, 128 S. Ct. 

at 2257 (citing Johnson, 339 U.S. 763, 70 S. Ct. 936 (Fifth Amendment)); id., 

128 S. Ct. at 2257 (citing Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 277, 110 S. Ct. at 1067 

(Fourth Amendment)). The Court concluded that de jure sovereignty does not 

alone determine the extraterritorial reach of the Constitution; instead, 

“questions of extraterritoriality turn on objective factors and practical 

concerns, not formalism.” Id. at 764, 128 S. Ct. at 2258. But the Court 

16

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 16 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

ultimately held its three-factor test relevant “in determining the reach of the 

Suspension Clause . . . .” Id. at 766, 128 S. Ct. at 2259 (emphasis added). 

Moreover, the Court disclaimed any intention to overrule the holdings of 

Johnson or Verdugo-Urquidez. Id. at 795, 128 S. Ct. at 2275. 

Given that Boumediene applied its three-factor test to a different 

constitutional provision than those with which we are confronted, and that it 

did not overrule the controlling precedents, it bears repeating: this court may 

not step ahead of the Supreme Court to hold Johnson (or Verdugo-Urquidez) 

no longer binding. Thus, this is not a case where no “clearly established law” 

articulates the plaintiffs’ rights to exterritorial application of the Fifth 

Amendment. Following Boumediene, there is no law at all supporting their 

position, and thus no Fifth Amendment claim exists.8

Significantly, the plaintiffs cited no case holding that their Fifth 

Amendment extraterritoriality claim has any viability. To the contrary, in 

light of the Court’s repeated references to the Suspension Clause, we must 

assume that the Court “explicitly confined its holding ‘only’ to the 

extraterritorial reach of the Suspension Clause and disclaimed any intention 

to disturb existing law governing the extraterritorial reach of any 

constitutional provisions, other than the Suspension Clause.” Ali v. Rumsfeld, 

649 F.3d 762, 771 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (internal citations and quotation marks 

omitted); see also Al Bahlul v. United States, 767 F.3d 1, 33 (D.C. Cir. 2014) 

8 I need not speculate on whether Boumediene’s rationale will ultimately be extended 

to determine the extraterritorial reach of other constitutional provisions. It is important to 

note, however, that even a defender of this prediction acknowledges the need for refinements 

of the three-factor functional test if Boumediene is brought to bear on other constitutional 

provisions. See Gerald L. Neuman, The Extraterritorial Constitution After Boumediene v. 

Bush, 82 S. CAL. L. REV. 259, 287 (2009) (“This nonexclusive [three-factor test] was tailored 

to the Suspension Clause and its case law, and would presumably need modification to 

address other rights.”).

17

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 17 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

(en banc) (Henderson, J., concurring) (“Whether Boumediene in fact portends 

a sea change in the extraterritorial application of the Constitution writ large, 

we are bound to take the Supreme Court at its word when it limits its holding 

to the Suspension Clause.” (internal citation omitted))9; Igartúa v. United 

States, 626 F.3d 592, 600 (1st Cir. 2010) (“[T]he Boumediene court was 

concerned only with the Suspension Clause . . . not with . . . any other 

constitutional text.”). 

For all these reasons, the plaintiffs plainly have no cognizable 

constitutional claim against Agent Mesa. 

IV. The Alien Tort Statute Does not Waive U.S. Sovereign 

Immunity

The plaintiffs seek damages from the United States under the ATS, 

urging as follows: Congress enacted the ATS to allow aliens to sue for violating 

“the law of nations.” 28 U.S.C. § 1350. The tort alleged in this case is 

“extrajudicial killing,” an alleged violation of jus cogens norms of customary 

international law.10 Customary international law asserts that by their nature, 

jus cogens violations apply even without a nation’s consent (consent being the 

9 Al Bahlul’s holding is not to the contrary. In Al Bahlul, the Government conceded 

that the Ex Post Facto Clause applies to aliens detained at Guantanamo Bay. 767 F.3d at 

18. And the en banc court “assume[d] without deciding that the Ex Post Facto Clause applies 

at Guantanamo.” Id. (italics in original). 

 

10 According to the Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law § 702 and cmt. n 

(1987), a state violates a jus cogens norm if it as a matter of policy:

[P]ractices, encourages, or condones (a) genocide, (b) slavery or slave 

trade, (c) the murder or causing the disappearance of individuals, (d) torture 

or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, (e) prolonged 

arbitrary detention, (f) systematic racial discrimination, [or] (g) a consistent 

pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.

18

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 18 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

ordinary prerequisite to rules of customary international law).11 In cases 

involving foreign officials sued for jus cogens violations of human rights, courts 

have held that individual immunity from suit does not exist. Finally, although 

the ATS has been held not to waive foreign states’ sovereign immunity, 

Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corp., 488 U.S. 428, 109 S. Ct. 

683 (1989), the plaintiffs assert that “Congress has not enacted a similar 

comprehensive scheme regulating U.S. sovereign immunity for international 

law violations prosecuted in our own courts.” And by this inaction, Congress 

has signaled that the United States is amenable to ATS suits. 

The concurring opinion here finds this reasoning “logical,” concludes that 

it has some force,” and posits: 

[I]f there is a category of torts (violations of the law of 

nations, for example) that change the ordinary rules of sovereign 

immunity because these acts cannot be authorized by the 

sovereign, then a country either would lack any such immunity to 

waive or would not be permitted to substitute for one of its officers.

Post at 44, 46, & 42 (Haynes, J., concurring). The concurrence asserts that this 

question has not been addressed by the panel opinion or the en banc 

compromise opinion that reinstates the panel decision. The concurrence 

believes this issue was left “unaddressed” in Sosa and suggests the Supreme 

Court take it up. Post at 42, 46. 

With due respect, the plaintiffs’ theory has yet to be adopted by any 

circuit court of appeals and has been repeatedly rejected, and that is because 

it has no valid foundation in the American constitutional structure, in the ATS, 

11 Vienna Conv. on the Law of Treaties, art. 53, May 23, 1969, 1155 U.N.T.S. 332, 

8 I.L.M. 679 (jus cogens norm is “peremptory norm” of international law, “a norm accepted 

and recognized by the international community of states as a whole as a norm from which no 

derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general 

international law having the same character”); see also Restatement (Third) of Foreign 

Relations Law § 102 and cmt. k (1987).

19

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 19 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

or in Supreme Court precedent. To effectuate their theory would create a 

breathtaking expansion of federal court authority, would abrogate federal 

sovereign immunity contrary to clearly established law, and would have 

severely adverse consequences for the conduct of American foreign affairs.

Taking the Supreme Court decisions first, Sosa did not consider U.S. 

sovereign immunity for ATS violations because the federal government was 

sued only under the Federal Tort Claims Act. 542 U.S. at 698, 124 S. Ct. at 

2747. The ATS claim was alleged only against Sosa, a Mexican national, 

individually. Id. at 698, 124 S. Ct. at 2747. No issue of American sovereign 

immunity from ATS claims was presented for the Court to decide or even 

comment on. The overarching theme of Sosa, moreover, is one of caution, not 

expansion of federal court authority. Inferences that Sosa might leave open 

an implied waiver of sovereign immunity are implausible. First, the Court in 

Sosa held unanimously that the ATS is a strictly jurisdictional statute. Sosa, 

542 U.S. at 714, 124 S. Ct. at 2755. It does not provide a substantive basis for 

aliens’ general assertions of customary international law violations. Purely 

jurisdictional statutes do not waive sovereign immunity. United States v. 

Testan, 424 U.S. 392, 398, 96 S. Ct. 948, 953 (1976). Second, Sosa rejected the 

view that the ATS “ought to cover all [customary international law] claims, so 

long as they also qualify as torts” and instead gave “domestic legal force to an 

extremely limited subset of [customary international law] claims . . . based on 

its reading of the specific intent of Congress.” Al-Bihani v. Obama, 619 F.3d 1, 

19 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in denial of rehearing en banc) 

(quoting Ernest A. Young, Sosa and the Retail Incorporation of International 

Law, 120 HARV. L. REV. F. 28, 29 (2007)). According to Sosa, the only claims 

authorized by the ATS for violations of international law norms are those with 

no “less definite content and acceptance among civilized nations than the 

historical paradigms familiar when § 1350 was enacted.” 542 U.S. at 732, 

20

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 20 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

124 S. Ct. at 2765. In addition, “the determination whether a norm is 

sufficiently definite to support a cause of action should (and, indeed, invariably 

must) involve an element of judgment about the practical consequences of 

making that cause available to litigants in the federal courts.” 542 U.S. at 732-

33, 124 S. Ct. at 2766 (footnotes omitted). The Court went on to deny Alvarez's 

claim for arbitrary arrest and detention in violation of an international treaty 

and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 542 U.S. at 738, 124 S. Ct. 

at 2769.

What does this cautionary opinion imply about federal sovereign 

immunity? As earlier noted, the Court decided in Amerada Hess that the FSIA 

“provides the sole basis for obtaining jurisdiction over a foreign state in federal 

court,” 488 U.S. at 439, 109 S. Ct. at 690. The Court flatly rejected the 

argument that Congress, by failing explicitly to repeal the ATS when it 

amended the FSIA, had intended for federal courts to “continue to exercise 

jurisdiction over foreign states in suits alleging violations of international law 

outside the confines of the FSIA.” 488 U.S. at 435, 109 S. Ct. at 689. That 

rejection would have been even more emphatic had the court considered 

whether the ATS waives the United States’ sovereign immunity because, as 

then-Judge Scalia pointed out, foreign sovereign immunity rests only on 

international comity, while domestic sovereign immunity originates in the 

constitutional separation of powers. Sanchez-Espinoza v. Reagan, 

770 F.2d 202, 207 n.5 (D.C. Cir. 1985). The plaintiffs here err twice in asserting 

the abrogation of federal sovereign immunity under the ATS. 

First, my colleagues’ argument in the negative—that Congress silently 

reserved the defense of sovereign immunity against potential violations of 

international law in U.S. courts, has it backward about the ATS, just as the 

Court held with respect to foreign sovereign immunity in Amerada Hess. 

Federal sovereign immunity is the overarching principle, which must be 

21

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 21 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

explicitly waived by the federal government.12 “[T]he United States cannot be 

sued at all without the consent of Congress.” Block v. North Dakota ex rel. Bd. 

of Univ. & Sch. Lands, 461 U.S. 273, 287, 103 S. Ct. 1811, 1819 (1983). To 

consent, Congress must unequivocally waive sovereign immunity in statutory 

text; waiver will not be implied. Lane v. Pena, 518 U.S. 187, 192, 

116 S. Ct. 2092, 2096 (1996). As Judge Scalia held in Sanchez-Espinoza, “[i]t 

would make a mockery of the doctrine of sovereign immunity if federal courts 

were authorized to sanction or enjoin, by judgments nominally against present 

or former Executive officers, actions that are, concededly and as a 

jurisdictional necessity, official actions of the United States.” 770 F.2d at 207 

(emphasis in original).13

Second, they mistakenly confuse cases deriving from foreign official 

immunity, an immunity based on officials’ status or conduct (and separate from 

the sovereign state’s own immunity), with the constitutional principle involved 

in U.S. sovereign immunity. See, e.g., Yousuf v. Samantar, 699 F.3d 763 

(4th Cir. 2012). No case has ever held the United States government has 

forfeited its sovereign immunity from suit because of any alleged violation of 

international law, whether jus cogens or otherwise. Nevertheless, they would 

expose the United States, alone among the nations of the world, to liability in 

12 This is exactly the point my colleagues fail to acknowledge. As they explain,

because “Congress does not appear to have acted in the same way [as it did with the FSIA] 

to define federal court jurisdiction over suits against the United States by foreign nationals 

under the ATS,” the ATS, as interpreted in Sosa, can deny the government its immunity. 

Post at 41 n.4. But the United States’ immunity from suit in federal courts is the rule, subject 

to explicit exceptions. Therefore, Congress need not do anything to preserve its sovereign 

immunity. 

 

13 He qualified this statement by noting that, “These consequences are tolerated when 

the officer’s action is unauthorized because contrary to statutory or constitutional 

prescription, but we think that exception can have no application when the basis for 

jurisdiction [under the ATS] requires action authorized by the sovereign as opposed to private 

wrongdoing.” Id. (citation and footnote omitted).

22

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 22 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

federal courts under the ATS without the protection of sovereign immunity. 

Contrary to the plaintiffs’ assertions, the Supreme Court’s circumspect 

readings of the ATS in Sosa and Kiobel (rejecting ATS’s extraterritorial 

application) offer no basis for the novel proposition that the ATS impliedly 

forfeits federal sovereign immunity.

Neither the plaintiffs nor the concurring opinion mentions that every 

other circuit court asked to hold the United States potentially liable under the 

ATS has declined the invitation. For example, in Tobar v. United States, 

639 F.3d 1191 (9th Cir. 2011), Ecuadorian nationals sued the United States 

under the ATS after the Coast Guard stopped, boarded, and detained their 

ship. The Ninth Circuit considered a number of statutes that might contain 

waivers of sovereign immunity, including the ATS. With respect to the ATS, 

the court held “[t]he Alien Tort Statute has been interpreted as a jurisdiction 

statute only—it has not been held to imply any waiver of sovereign immunity.” 

Id. at 1196 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). This 

determination is particularly notable because it post-dates the Supreme 

Court’s decision in Sosa. 

The Fourth Circuit reached the same conclusion in Goldstar (Panama) 

S.A. v. United States, 967 F.2d 965, 968 (4th Cir. 1992). The plaintiffs there 

asserted ATS claims against the United States government for property 

damage that occurred during the U.S. invasion of Panama. Once again, the 

government asserted its sovereign immunity, and the court agreed, holding 

that “any party asserting jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Statute must 

establish, independent of that statute, that the United States has consented to 

suit.” Id. 

So too for the D.C. Circuit. In Sanchez-Espinoza v. Reagan, 770 F.2d 202 

(D.C. Cir. 1985), Nicaraguan citizens sued the United States for injuries 

incurred at the hands of the Contras. Id. at 205. The federal government 

23

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 23 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

asserted its sovereign immunity. Then-Judge Scalia held, in no uncertain 

terms, that “[t]he Alien Tort Statute itself is not a waiver of sovereign 

immunity.” Id. at 207; see also Canadian Transp. Co. v. United States, 

663 F.2d 1081, 1092 (D.C. Cir. 1980). 

That these plaintiffs assert a violation of a jus cogens norm does not—

and should not—change the outcome of the sovereign immunity analysis. The 

plaintiffs argue that jus cogens norms occupy such a high place in international 

law that their violation abrogates sovereign immunity. Other circuits to 

address such an argument have rejected it. In Matar v. Dichter, 563 F.3d 9, 14 

(2d Cir. 2009), the Second Circuit held that jus cogens norms cannot abrogate 

sovereign immunity when Congress has explicitly granted such immunity in 

the FSIA. It then broadly asserted that “[a] claim premised on the violation of 

jus cogens does not withstand foreign sovereign immunity.” Id. at 15; see also 

Princz, 26 F.3d at 1174; Siderman, 965 F.2d at 718-719; Smith v. Socialist 

People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, 101 F.3d 239, 242-44 (2d Cir. 1996). The 

same principle should apply to the constitutionally-footed doctrine of federal 

sovereign immunity. Given the unanimous decisions of the other circuits, 

there is no justification for a federal court’s unilateral abrogation of our

government’s sovereign immunity under the ATS. 

Returning once more to Sosa, it becomes clear that the Court, as it 

rejected Alvarez's broad claim for a violation of “the law of nations,” fully 

realized the potentially untoward consequences of empowering lower courts to 

adopt a federal common law of international law torts. Not only did the Court

limit the scope of such actions, but it also explained the difficulties that would 

ensue had it adopted Alvarez's facially appealing claim:

Alvarez cites little authority that a rule so broad has the 

status of a binding customary norm today. He certainly cites 

nothing to justify the federal courts in taking his broad rule as the 

predicate for a federal lawsuit, for its implications would be 

24

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 24 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

breathtaking. His rule would support a cause of action in federal 

court for any arrest, anywhere in the world, unauthorized by the 

law of the jurisdiction in which it took place, and would create a 

cause of action for any seizure of an alien in violation of the Fourth 

Amendment, supplanting the actions under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 

42 U.S.C. § 1983, and Bivens . . . , that now provide damages 

remedies for such violations. It would create an action in federal 

court for arrests by state officers who simply exceed their 

authority; and for the violation of any limit that the law of any 

country might place on the authority of its own officers to arrest. 

And all of this assumes that Alvarez could establish that Sosa was 

acting on behalf of a government when he made the arrest, for 

otherwise he would need a rule broader still.

542 U.S. at 736-37, 124 S. Ct. at 2768 (footnote omitted). 

Whatever may be said for the broad principle Alvarez advances, in 

the present, imperfect world, it expresses an aspiration that 

exceeds any binding customary rule having the specificity we 

require.

542 U.S. at 738, 124 S. Ct. at 2769 (footnote omitted).

The parallels between these concerns and those attending a claim for 

“extrajudicial killing” are obvious. The plaintiffs’ advocacy here of a broad rule 

clearly has implications for both domestic law enforcement and for the use of 

American lethal force in foreign confrontations. Such alleged violations of jus 

cogens could transform every use of deadly force by a federal officer against an 

alien into a litigable violation of a peremptory norm of international law, 

supplanting Bivens actions. These claims could also be asserted by aliens 

against state or local law enforcement officers, supplanting § 1983 actions. 

Finally, this alleged cause of action could be asserted directly against the 

United States, which contravenes federal sovereign immunity and is at odds 

with the FSIA immunity from suit every foreign nation enjoys in U.S. courts. 

The existence of foreign sovereign immunity does not, however, 

eliminate the international complications of opening American courts to broad 

25

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 25 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

and vague claims under the ATS. As in Sosa, the plaintiffs’ proffered rule 

“would support a cause of action in federal court for any [alleged extrajudicial 

killing], anywhere in the world.” 542 U.S. at 736, 124 S. Ct. at 2768. Although 

certain jus cogens prohibitions, e.g. state-sponsored slavery or genocide, may 

be self-evidently within the scope of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Sosa, 

“[a]ny credible invocation of a principle against [extrajudicial killing] that the 

civilized world accepts as binding customary international law requires a 

factual basis beyond” mere conclusional pleadings. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 737, 

124 S. Ct. at 2769. That a multiplicity of claims could aggravate relations with 

foreign nations and thwart the Executive and Legislative branches’ discretion 

in conducting foreign affairs seems obvious and constitutes additional reasons, 

acknowledged in Sosa, for extreme caution in recognizing claims for breach of 

“the law of nations” actionable via the ATS. 542 U.S. at 727, 124 S. Ct. at 2763. 

In sum, the plaintiffs’ ATS claim against the United States is without 

foundation, and the concurring opinion should not be read as improvidently 

providing them support.

Conclusion

A “Lawless” U.S. Border?

One final point is necessary in response to the plaintiffs’ assertion that 

enforcement of United States borders will become “lawless” if aliens in the 

position of Hernandez lose access to American civil tort recovery. This court 

must, of course, assume, based only on the pleadings, that Hernandez was the 

victim of an unprovoked shooting. The plaintiffs’ assertion of official, or 

officially condoned lawlessness is, however, inaccurate. This tragedy neither 

should, nor has, escaped review. Numerous federal agencies, including the 

FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, 

the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and the United States 

Attorney’s Office, investigated this incident and declined to indict Agent Mesa 

26

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 26 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

or grant extradition to Mexico under 18 U.S.C. § 3184. There were other 

possible avenues for evaluation of Agent Mesa’s conduct. Plaintiffs could have 

sought federal court review of the Attorney General’s scope of employment 

certification under the Westfall Act. See Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno, 

515 U.S. 417, 420, 115 S. Ct. 2227, 2229 (1995); see also Osborn v. Haley, 

549 U.S. 225, 229-30, 127 S. Ct. 881, 887-88 (2007). Further, state systems 

may superintend excesses of federal executive authority. 

See 28 U.S.C. § 2679(d)(3). A judicially implied tort remedy under Bivens for 

constitutional violations or the Alien Tort Statute is not and was not the 

plaintiffs’ only source of review for this tragedy.

I respectfully concur in the en banc opinion.

27

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 27 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

JAMES L. DENNIS, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and concurring in the 

judgment:

I join the en banc court’s opinion in its entirety except as to its reason for 

denying Appellants’ Fourth Amendment claim, with which I agree in result. I 

also join the concurring opinion of Judge Prado, except to the extent that it 

adopts the en banc court’s reason for denying this claim. In United States v. 

Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990), the Supreme Court apparently ruled 

that the phrase “the people” in the Fourth Amendment “refers to a class of 

persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed 

sufficient connection with this community to be considered part of that 

community.” Id. at 265. I am inclined to agree, however, with those who have 

suggested that the Verdugo-Urquidez view cannot be squared with the Court’s 

later holding in Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008), that “questions of 

extraterritoriality turn on objective factors, and practical concerns, not 

formalism.” Id. at 764; see WAYNE R. LAFAVE ET AL., 2 CRIM. PROC. § 3.1(i) 

n.237.1 (3d ed. 2014) (citing Gerald L. Neuman, The Extraterritorial 

Constitution After Boumediene v. Bush, 82 S. CAL. L. REV. 259, 259, 272 (2008); 

Ellen S. Podgor, Welcome to the Other Side of the Railroad Tracks: A 

Meaningless Exclusionary Rule, 16 SW. J. INT’L L. 299, 310 (2010)); Baher 

Azmy, Executive Detention, Boumediene, and the New Common Law of Habeas, 

95 IOWA L. REV. 445, 465 (2010); Christina Duffy Burnett, A Convenient 

Constitution? Extraterritoriality After Boumediene, 109 COLUM. L. REV. 973, 

1044 (2009); Timothy Zick, Territoriality and the First Amendment: Free 

Speech at—and Beyond—Our Borders, 85 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1543, 1614 

(2010).

The Mexican government has indicated that our adjudication of the 

Appellants’ claims, whether under the Fourth or Fifth Amendment, in this 

28

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 28 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

particular case would not cause any friction with its sovereign interests. 

However, it appears that our judicial entanglement with extraterritorial 

Fourth Amendment excessive-force claims would be likely to involve 

impracticable and anomalous factors. For these reasons, I agree with the 

opinion of the court in declining to apply the Fourth Amendment to adjudicate

the Appellants’ claims but I do so out of concern for pragmatic and political 

questions rather than on a formal classification of the litigants involved.

29

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 29 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

EDWARD C. PRADO, Circuit Judge, concurring:

I agree with the en banc court’s holding that the constitutional rights 

asserted by 15-year-old Sergio Hernández and his family were not clearly 

established in 2010, when Agent Mesa fired his fatal shots across the 

international border. However, I am compelled to write separately in response 

to Judge Jones’s concurring opinion, which, in my view, sets forth an 

oversimplified and flawed analysis of the Fifth Amendment and the Supreme 

Court’s extraterritoriality precedents. In her concurrence, Judge Jones offers 

an interpretation of the Fifth Amendment implications of Graham v. Connor, 

490 U.S. 386 (1989), that is contrary to Supreme Court precedent and is certain 

to sow confusion in our circuit. Further, the concurrence rests on a reading of 

the Court’s pivotal extraterritoriality rulings in Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 

U.S. 763 (1950), United States v. Verdugo–Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990), and 

Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008), that sacrifices nuance for an 

unwarranted sense of certainty.

The facts in this case—though novel—are recurring, and similar lawsuits 

have begun percolating in the federal courts along the border.1 Ultimately, it 

will be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether its broad statements in 

Boumediene apply to our border with Mexico and to provide clarity to law 

enforcement, civilians, and the federal courts tasked with interpreting the 

Court’s seminal opinions on the extraterritorial reach of constitutional rights. 

Because the law is currently unclear, I join the en banc court’s opinion in full 

and write separately only to respond to Judge Jones’s concurring opinion.

1 See, e.g., Rodriguez v. Unknown Parties, No. 4:14-cv-02251 (D. Ariz. filed July 29, 

2014). 

30

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 30 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

I. The Applicability of the Fifth Amendment 

The notion that the Fourth Amendment provides the exclusive means of 

relief for Hernández is rooted in a strained and incorrect reading of Graham v. 

Connor. The Court in Graham held that “all claims that law enforcement 

officers have used excessive force—deadly or not—in the course of an arrest, 

investigatory stop, or other ‘seizure’ of a free citizen should be analyzed under 

the Fourth Amendment and its ‘reasonableness’ standard, rather than under 

a ‘substantive due process’ approach.” 490 U.S. at 395. The Court explained 

that “[b]ecause the Fourth Amendment provides an explicit textual source of

constitutional protection against this sort of physically intrusive governmental 

conduct, that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of ‘substantive due 

process,’ must be the guide for analyzing these claims.” Id.

Judge Jones’s concurrence rightly points to these portions of the Court’s 

opinion, but it elides key limiting phrases in each: “free citizen” and “explicit 

textual source.” If, as the Court held in Verdugo–Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 274–

75, the Fourth Amendment does not shield aliens located abroad (viz. non-“free 

citizens”), then it cannot provide “an explicit textual source of constitutional 

protection” to persons in Hernández’s position, and Graham’s directive to apply 

the Fourth Amendment to covered excessive-force claims is simply inapt. 

Indeed, as the Court explained in United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259 

(1997), “Graham . . . does not hold that all constitutional claims relating to 

physically abusive government conduct must arise under either the Fourth or 

Eighth Amendments; rather, Graham simply requires that if a constitutional 

claim is covered by a specific constitutional provision, . . . the claim must be 

analyzed under the standard appropriate to that specific provision, not under 

the rubric of substantive due process.” Id. at 272 n.7 (emphasis added). 

Subsequent cases have affirmed this view. See Cnty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 

31

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 31 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

523 U.S. 833, 843 (1998) (“Substantive due process analysis is therefore 

inappropriate in this case only if respondents’ claim is ‘covered by’ the Fourth 

Amendment. It is not.”); Petta v. Rivera, 143 F.3d 895, 901 (5th Cir. 1998) (“[A]

plaintiff whose claim is not susceptible to proper analysis with reference to a 

specific constitutional right may still state a claim under § 1983 for a violation 

of his or her Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right, and have 

the claim judged by the constitutional standard which governs that right.”).2

Hernández, a noncitizen, was fatally shot in Mexico by a U.S. 

government agent standing on U.S. soil. Accepting Hernández’s allegations as 

true, as we must on a motion to dismiss, Agent Mesa made no effort to 

2 Apparently troubled by the implication that the Court in Graham excluded the class 

of claims at issue here from the presumptive coverage of the Fourth Amendment, Judge 

Jones’s concurrence imputes a restrictive meaning to the Court’s phrase “free citizens.” 

According to the concurrence, the Court could not have intended to permit non-citizens to 

assert claims for excessive force under the Fourteenth Amendment while limiting citizens to 

the Fourth Amendment. But this misses the point. Even if, as the concurrence suggests, the 

Court used this term in Graham—a case centering on the use of excessive force during an 

investigatory stop of a citizen, 490 U.S. at 388–89—to distinguish between the constitutional 

protections afforded to civilians, pretrial detainees, and incarcerated individuals, this says 

nothing about whether a claim that falls outside of these set boundaries is “covered by” the 

Fourth Amendment. Where, as here, a noncitizen alleges excessive force abroad, and there is 

no indication that the show of authority was directed at apprehension, it cannot be that the 

claim arises under the Fourth Amendment or not at all. 

The cases the concurrence cites are not to the contrary. Cf. Lewis, 523 U.S. at 843–44 

(holding that the passenger of a vehicle being pursued by police was not “seized” during a 

fatal collision and therefore could assert a substantive due process claim under the 

Fourteenth Amendment); Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 273–74 (1994) (declining to 

recognize a substantive due process right to be free from criminal prosecution without 

probable cause because the Fourth Amendment was drafted to address pretrial deprivations 

of liberty); Brower v. Cnty. of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 596–99 (1989) (determining that the fatal 

use of a roadblock to terminate a suspect’s flight constituted a seizure and observing that “a 

Fourth Amendment seizure does not occur whenever there is a governmentally caused 

termination of an individual’s freedom of movement (the innocent passerby), nor even 

whenever there is a governmentally caused and governmentally desired termination of an 

individual’s freedom of movement (the fleeing felon), but only when there is a governmental 

termination of freedom of movement through means intentionally applied”); Tennessee v. 

Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 3, 7 (1985) (analyzing the apprehension of a fleeing suspect through the 

use of deadly force as a seizure). 

32

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 32 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

apprehend Hernández—he detained one of Hernández’s companions, then 

fired his service weapon into Mexico, where Hernández hid behind the pillar 

of a bridge, and he ultimately left Hernández’s body where it lay. Under 

Verdugo–Urquidez and Lewis, the Fourth Amendment does not “cover” this 

claim of excessive force. I would therefore hold that Hernández may invoke the 

Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on constitutionally arbitrary official conduct.

II. The Extraterritoriality of the Fifth Amendment

Judge Jones’s concurrence paints our extraterritoriality case law in 

broad strokes, with a palette of black and white. The state of the law, as the 

concurrence views it, permits no gray.3 According to the concurrence, the 

Constitution cannot apply extraterritorially to the facts of this case because 

the Supreme Court has held, generally, that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments 

do not apply to noncitizens with no significant voluntary connection to the 

United States. Citing Eisentrager and Verdugo–Urquidez, the concurrence

asserts that the Supreme Court has foreclosed the question before our Court.

This uncomplicated view of extraterritoriality fails to exhibit due regard for

the Court’s watershed opinion in Boumediene, which not only authoritatively 

3 The absolutism of the concurrence’s analytical framework is epitomized by its 

phrasing of the constitutional issue in this case: “United States constitutional rights do not 

extend to aliens who (a) lack any connection to the United States and (b) are injured on 

foreign soil.” All nuance is lost, and only one conclusion follows from the question presented. 

But there is no question that Hernández had some connection to the United States, even if 

not the “significant voluntary connection” required to invoke the protections of the Fourth 

Amendment under Verdugo–Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 271, by virtue of the acts of Agent Mesa 

that originated in the United States and had their effect in Mexico. Likewise, it is misguided 

to focus exclusively on Hernández’s location within Mexico when the bullets Agent Mesa fired 

from United States soil found their target. This is not a case involving a drone strike, an act 

of war on a distant battlefield, or law-enforcement conduct occurring entirely within another 

nation’s territory; it is a fatal shooting by small-arms fire in which the short distance 

separating those involved was bisected by an international border. These distinct facts cast 

doubt on the concurrence’s simplistic framework and belie its warning that this case 

implicates “our nation’s applications of force abroad.”

33

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 33 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

interpreted these earlier cases but also announced the bedrock standards for 

determining the extraterritorial reach of the Constitution—not just the writ of 

habeas corpus. Applying these standards, I would hold the Fifth Amendment 

applicable to the particular facts alleged by Hernández.

In Boumediene, the Court provided its clearest and most definitive 

articulation of the principles governing the application of constitutional 

provisions abroad. Although the Court was tasked with deciding the narrow 

question of whether aliens designated enemy combatants and detained at 

Guantanamo Bay had the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus, Justice 

Kennedy wrote a lengthy opinion for the Court that grappled with the 

foundations of extraterritoriality. The Court first discussed its sparse 

extraterritoriality precedents and found them to undermine “the Government’s 

argument that, at least as applied to noncitizens, the Constitution necessarily 

stops where de jure sovereignty ends.” Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 755 (emphasis 

added). Rather, the Court read beyond the bare holdings of these cases and 

concluded that they shared a common thread: “the idea that questions of 

extraterritoriality turn on objective factors and practical concerns, not 

formalism.” Id. at 764.4 Based on these considerations, the Court identified at 

4 Critically, while explaining its reasoning, the Court repeatedly cited Justice 

Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Verdugo–Urquidez, in which he advocated a functional 

analysis of extraterritoriality. Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 759–62. In Verdugo–Urquidez, the 

Court held that the Fourth Amendment had no application to DEA agents’ warrantless 

search of a Mexican citizen’s residences in Mexico. 494 U.S. at 262, 274–75. Although he 

agreed with the Court’s ultimate conclusion that no Fourth Amendment violation had occurred, 

Justice Kennedy wrote separately to express his view that the reach of the Constitution is not 

confined by the identity of the class of persons that ratified the instrument or by the text used 

to denominate those subject to its protection (e.g., “the people”). Id. at 275–76 (Kennedy, J., 

concurring). Rather, Justice Kennedy urged a functional approach to extraterritoriality—one 

that he traced as far back as In re Ross, 140 U.S. 453 (1891), the Insular Cases (e.g., Downes v. 

Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 (1901), Hawaii v. Mankichi, 190 U.S. 197 (1903), Dorr v. United States, 

195 U.S. 138 (1904), and Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U.S. 298 (1922)), and Reid v. Covert, 354 

U.S. 1, 74 (1957) (Harlan, J., concurring). See id. at 277–78 (“These [extraterritoriality] 

34

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 34 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

least three factors that were relevant in determining the reach of the 

Suspension Clause: (1) the citizenship and status of the detainee and the 

quality of the process underlying this finding; (2) the nature of the sites where 

the apprehension and detention occurred; and (3) the practical obstacles 

inherent in determining the detainee’s entitlement to the writ. Id. at 766. After 

analyzing these factors, the Court held that the Suspension Clause “has full 

effect at Guantanamo Bay.” Id. at 771. 

This holding may have been limited to the Suspension Clause, but the 

Court’s reasoning was decidedly not so constricted. Justice Kennedy’s opinion 

drew from the analysis of numerous rights in numerous contexts other than 

habeas, id. at 755–64, framing its review of the case law as a survey of the 

Court’s discussions of “the Constitution’s extraterritorial application,” id. at 

755 (emphasis added). More importantly, when the Court rejected the 

Government’s proffered reading of Eisentrager—the case that Judge Jones’s 

concurrence cites as facially foreclosing Hernández’s Fifth Amendment 

claim5—it announced in no uncertain terms that “[n]othing in Eisentrager says 

authorities . . . stand for the proposition that we must interpret constitutional protections in 

light of the undoubted power of the United States to take actions to assert its legitimate power 

and authority abroad.”); id. at 278 (analyzing the extraterritorial reach of the Fourth 

Amendment by determining whether “[t]he conditions and considerations of this case would 

make adherence to the [Amendment] . . . impracticable and anomalous”). 

The significance of this opinion, which evinces Justice Kennedy’s dedication to applying 

a functional approach to extraterritoriality even in a U.S.–Mexico cross-border lawenforcement context, cannot be understated. And it hardly bears repeating here that Justice 

Kennedy cast the deciding vote in both Verdugo–Urquidez and Boumediene. 5 As Boumediene recognized, the ruling in Eisentrager cannot reasonably be divorced 

from its idiosyncratic facts: the extension of Fifth Amendment rights and the writ of habeas 

corpus to alleged members of the German armed forces who were captured in China, 

convicted of violating the laws of war, and imprisoned in occupied, post-World War II 

Germany. See Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 762–64. If the enemy combatants at Guantanamo 

Bay were not sufficiently similar to the petitioners in Eisentrager to be bound by that case, 

then Hernández—an unarmed fifteen-year-old boy with the misfortune of standing on the 

wrong side of an international border—certainly is not. 

35

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 35 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

that de jure sovereignty is or has ever been the only relevant consideration in 

determining the geographic reach of the Constitution or of habeas corpus.” Id.

at 764 (emphasis added).6

Boumediene, and its functionality-focused reading of the Court’s previous 

extraterritoriality decisions, is instructive here. Confronted with a novel 

extraterritoriality question, we must apply the only appropriate analytical 

framework the Court has given us: the Boumediene factors. Adapted to the 

present context, three objective factors and practical concerns are relevant to 

our extraterritoriality determination: (1) the citizenship and status of the 

claimant, (2) the nature of the location where the constitutional violation 

occurred, and (3) the practical obstacles inherent in enforcing the claimed right. 

Cf. id. at 766–71.7 The relevant practical obstacles include the consequences for 

Furthermore, while Judge Jones’s concurrence is quick to emphasize Boumediene’s 

limited holding, it is conspicuously silent as to the significance of Eisentrager’s equally 

narrow ruling. See Eisentrager, 339 U.S. at 785 (“We hold that the Constitution does not 

confer a right of personal security or an immunity from military trial and punishment upon 

an alien enemy engaged in the hostile service of a government at war with the United 

States.”). In any event, my point is not that Boumediene overruled Eisentrager, but that the 

2008 case offers us the Court’s authoritative reading of the 1950 case—one that eschews a 

formalistic approach to extraterritoriality. It is this interpretation of Eisentrager—according 

to which the case must be understood as consistent with the functional approach endorsed in 

Boumediene—that must guide our analysis. 

6 Even if these statements were mere dicta, we and our fellow circuits have long 

recognized that the Supreme Court’s words carry special weight. See Schwab v. Crosby, 451 

F.3d 1308, 1325–26 (11th Cir. 2006) (noting that the court has “previously recognized that 

dicta from the Supreme Court is not something to be lightly cast aside” and citing cases from 

eleven circuits expressing the deference owed to Supreme Court dicta (citation and internal 

quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Becton, 632 F.2d 1294, 1296 n.3 (5th Cir. 1980) 

(“We are not bound by dicta, even of our own court. . . . Dicta of the Supreme Court are, of 

course, another matter.”).

7 Judge Jones’s concurrence is of course correct that Professor Neuman, “a defender of 

th[e] prediction” that Boumediene may be extended to other constitutional provisions, has 

acknowledged “the need for refinements of the three-factor functional test.” But that is 

exactly what the panel majority’s original opinion suggested, see Hernández v. United States, 

757 F.3d 249, 262 (5th Cir. 2014), vacated in part and reinstated in part on reh’g en banc, ---

F.3d --- (5th Cir. 2015), and what federal courts of appeals are uniquely well-equipped to 

propound—refinements that are faithful to the Court’s opinion, which described the factors 

36

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 36 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

U.S. actions abroad, the substantive rules that would govern the claim, and the 

likelihood that a favorable ruling would lead to friction with another country’s 

government. See id.; Verdugo–Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 273–74; id. at 278 

(Kennedy, J., concurring). As the panel majority’s original opinion explained, 

the Boumediene factors, coupled with an analysis of the operation, text, and 

history of the Fifth Amendment, militate in favor of the extraterritorial 

application of substantive due process protections on these facts. See Hernández 

v. United States, 757 F.3d 249, 259–63, 267–72 (5th Cir. 2014), vacated in part 

and reinstated in part on reh’g en banc, --- F.3d --- (5th Cir. 2015).

In sum, were we to reach the constitutional merits, I would hold, as the 

vacated panel majority’s opinion did, Hernández, 757 F.3d at 272, that a 

noncitizen situated immediately beyond our nation’s borders may invoke the 

protection of the Fifth Amendment against the arbitrary use of lethal smallarms force by a U.S. government official standing on U.S. soil. To hold 

otherwise would enshrine an unsustainably strict, territorial approach to 

constitutional rights—one the Supreme Court rejected in Boumediene.8

as non-exclusive and derived them from contexts in addition to habeas, see Boumediene, 553 

U.S. at 766. Moreover, Professor Neuman also reads Boumediene as a case with implications 

beyond habeas corpus, and he has expressed optimism about the expansion of Justice 

Kennedy’s functional approach. See Gerald L. Neuman, Essay, Extraterritoriality and the 

Interest of the United States in Regulating its Own, 99 Cornell L. Rev. 1441, 1458, 1470 (2014) 

(observing that “[a]lthough the holding of Boumediene concerned the Suspension Clause, 

Justice Kennedy described his functional approach as an overall framework derived from 

precedents involving a variety of constitutional rights,” and concluding that “[t]he selective 

functional approach of Boumediene v. Bush should be developed and strengthened to 

reconcile commitment to constitutional values with the extraterritorial exercise of power”).

8 Disturbingly, such a narrow approach could also create zones of lawlessness where 

the fortuity of one’s location at the time of a gunshot would mark the boundary between 

liability and impunity. This would result, in turn, in perverse and disturbing incentives for 

government agents confronted with noncitizen migrants near the border. Because directing 

lethal force into Mexico would violate no constitutional norms, a government agent resorting 

to deadly force would have every reason to fire his weapon before the migrant reaches the 

U.S. border, or after the migrant crosses back into Mexico, to avoid possible civil liability. By 

contrast, if the agent shoots while the migrant is in U.S. territory, then the Constitution is 

37

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 37 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

III. Conclusion

Contrary to Judge Jones’s concurrence, I believe that the “path of least 

resistance” presents a prudent course for the en banc court. The depth of our 

disagreement about the meaning of Boumediene, Verdugo–Urquidez, and 

Eisentrager is compelling evidence that the law was not clearly established at 

the time of the tragic events giving rise to this suit. But to affirmatively find 

no constitutional violation on these facts—which are without parallel in our 

precedents—requires a troublingly uncomplicated reading of the governing 

law. Just as Graham cannot be understood without Lanier and Lewis, 

Verdugo–Urquidez and Eisentrager cannot be understood without Boumediene. 

Reading these cases in context and with due regard for the novel facts 

presented here, it is evident that Agent Mesa’s fatal cross-border shooting of 

Sergio Hernández cannot be painted in the simple black and white prevalent 

in Judge Jones’s concurrence. It requires a shade of gray that only a careful 

engagement with our precedents and the record in this case can produce. 

Were we in a position to reach the constitutional merits, I would hold 

that Agent Mesa’s actions violated Hernández’s Fifth Amendment right to be 

free from constitutionally arbitrary government conduct. But until the 

Supreme Court intervenes to clarify the reach of Boumediene and apply Justice 

Kennedy’s functional test to these distinct facts, I remain satisfied that the en 

banc court has wisely resolved this appeal on clearly-established-law grounds.

suddenly—and undesirably—implicated. And it goes without saying that if the scenario were 

reversed, and Mexican government agents were firing weapons across the border into the 

United States, unyielding conceptions of territoriality would likely fall by the wayside.

Judge Jones’s concurrence disputes the characterization of the border region as 

“lawless,” citing the governmental investigations into Hernández’s fatal shooting. But the 

fact that the United States “declined to indict Agent Mesa or grant extradition to Mexico” 

speaks not to the promise of accountability but to the practical obstacles associated with the 

criminal and political processes that exist to regulate official conduct.

38

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 38 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

I respectfully concur in the en banc opinion. 

39

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 39 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 Cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

CATHARINA HAYNES, Circuit Judge, joined by SOUTHWICK and 

HIGGINSON, Circuit Judges, concurring:

I concur in the judgment of the court.1 I write separately to address the 

question of sovereign immunity for the United States in more detail. As the 

reinstated panel opinion correctly notes, the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) is a 

jurisdictional statute but is not “stillborn.” Hernandez, 757 F.3d at 258; Sosa 

v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 714 (2004). It provides a forum in United 

States courts for tort claims by aliens alleging a violation of “the law of 

nations.”2 28 U.S.C. § 1350. The panel majority opinion nonetheless 

determines that Congress must explicitly waive sovereign immunity to make 

such torts committed in violation of the “law of nations” actionable against the 

United States (substituted for one of its officers)—as eloquently described in 

the special concurrence filed by Judge Jones (“Special Concurrence”).3 That 

may be a fair understanding of the current state of the law in this area. But I 

1 I also concur in the reasoning of the en banc opinion as supplemented herein.

2 The parties and panel majority opinion focus on whether sovereign immunity bars 

an ATS suit, rather than on whether killing an unarmed civilian without any provocation or 

just cause would violate the types of international norms contemplated by the ATS in the 

phrase “law of nations.” See, e.g., Hernandez, 757 F.3d at 259 (assuming arguendo that 

Plaintiffs averred a violation of the “law of nations” the ATS would recognize by alleging “that 

the United States violated the international prohibition against ‘extrajudicial killings’”). For 

purposes of this discussion, I will assume that killing a civilian without any provocation or 

just cause would violate the law of nations, as did the panel majority opinion. Id.

3 Because Mesa’s conduct occurred in the United States, I do not view Kiobel v. Royal 

Dutch Petroleum Co., 133 S. Ct. 1659 (2013), cited by the government here, as barring an 

action under the ATS. See id. at 1669 (“[A]ll the relevant conduct took place outside the 

United States,” such that the ATS did not provide a United States forum for the international 

tort claimed in that case); see also id. at 1670 (Alito, J., concurring) (“[A] putative ATS cause 

of action will fall within the scope of the presumption against extraterritoriality . . . unless 

the domestic conduct is sufficient to violate an international law norm that satisfies Sosa’s

requirements of definiteness and acceptance among civilized nations.”).

40

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 40 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 Cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

wish to address some undeveloped implications of what the Supreme Court has 

so far held, above all in its extended treatment of the ATS in Sosa.

As the panel majority opinion notes, Sosa holds that federal courts can 

recognize a “limited” number of international common law torts that fall within 

the rubric of the ATS. See Sosa, 542 U.S. at 712. Left unaddressed is the 

question of whether any such common law torts would make the sovereign 

immunity of the United States unavailable. Put another way, if the United 

States has sovereign immunity as the Special Concurrence asserts, then I 

agree that it must be expressly waived in order for a lawsuit such as this one 

to be viable. But if there is a category of torts (violations of the law of nations, 

for example) that change the ordinary rules of sovereign immunity because 

these acts cannot be authorized by the sovereign, then a country either would 

lack any such immunity to waive or would not be permitted to substitute for 

one of its officers. 

The Fourth Circuit recently discussed this possibility, noting in the 

context of foreign official immunity: 

Unlike private acts that do not come within the scope of foreign 

official immunity, jus cogens violations may well be committed 

under color of law and, in that sense, constitute acts performed in 

the course of the foreign official’s employment by the Sovereign. 

However, as a matter of international and domestic law, jus 

cogens violations are, by definition, acts that are not officially 

authorized by the Sovereign. 

Yousuf v. Samantar, 699 F.3d 763, 775–76 (4th Cir. 2012) (citing Siderman de 

Blake v. Republic of Argentina,4 965 F.2d 699, 718 (9th Cir. 1992)

4 At issue in Siderman was a foreign state’s immunity from suit under the Foreign 

Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1602 et seq. 965 F.2d at 718–19. The 

Siderman court’s discussion of jus cogens supports the views expressed in this concurrence; 

yet, that court ultimately found that it had no jurisdiction over a foreign state (Argentina) 

because the Supreme Court in Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corporation, 

488 U.S. 428, 433 (1989), has interpreted the FSIA as a complete and exclusive scheme 

41

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 41 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 Cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

(“International law does not recognize an act that violates jus cogens as a

sovereign act.”)). 

In turn, jus cogens norms are a form of customary international law, a 

term often used instead of the phrase “law of nations.” See generally Gwynne 

L. Skinner, Roadblocks to Remedies: Recently Developed Barriers to Relief for 

Aliens Injured by U.S. Officials, Contrary to the Founders’ Intent, 47 U. RICH.

L. REV. 555, 565 (2013) (“The ATS gives federal courts jurisdiction over tort 

claims brought by aliens for violations of the law of nations, a term now seen 

as synonymous with customary international law.”); Ernest A. Young, Sorting 

Out the Debate over Customary International Law, 42 VA. J. INT’L L. 365, 448 

(2002) (“[M]ost courts [interpreting the ATS] seem to have limited the scope of 

actionable customary international law to fundamental or jus cogens

norms . . . .”); Justin D. Cummins, Invigorating Labor: A Human Rights 

Approach in the United States, 19 EMORY INT’L L. REV. 1, 5 n.12 (2005) (“Jus

cogens ‘is now widely accepted . . . as a principle of customary law (albeit of 

higher status).’” (quoting RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS § 102 

n.6)); cf. Siderman, 965 F.2d at 715 (noting that jus cogens differs from 

customary international law in that “customary international law derives 

solely from the consent of states, [while] the fundamental and universal norms 

constituting jus cogens [derive from customary laws considered binding on all 

governing foreign state immunity in U.S. courts. See Siderman, 965 F.2d at 718–19; see also 

Amerada Hess, 488 U.S. at 433–34 (noting the Court “start[ed] from the settled proposition 

that the subject-matter jurisdiction of the lower federal courts is determined by Congress in 

the exact degrees and character which to Congress may seem proper for the public good” and 

holding that “the text and structure of the FSIA demonstrate Congress’ intention that the 

FSIA be the sole basis for obtaining jurisdiction over a foreign state in our courts” (citations 

and internal quotation marks omitted)). Congress does not appear to have acted in the same 

way to define federal court jurisdiction over suits against the United States by foreign 

nationals under the ATS, except through the ATS itself. Therefore, it is imperative to 

consider jus cogens and its impact on the United States’s immunity in light of the Court’s 

painstaking interpretation of the ATS in Sosa and the common law torts recognized therein.

42

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 42 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 Cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

nations and] transcend such consent, as exemplified by the theories underlying 

the judgments of the Nuremberg tribunals following World War II”); SanchezEspinoza v. Reagan, 770 F.2d 202, 206–07 (D.C. Cir. 1985) (Scalia, Circuit J.)

(describing “the law of nations [as] so-called customary international law, 

arising from the customs and usages of civilized nations” (citation and internal 

quotation marks omitted)). 

Although not all jus cogens norms may fall within the category of 

international common law torts that federal courts can recognize under Sosa, 

it seems logical that cognizable jus cogens norms may preclude a sovereign 

immunity defense. Cf. Thomas H. Lee, The Safe-Conduct Theory of the Alien 

Tort Statute, 106 COLUM. L. REV. 830, 879–82, 890–95, 901–08 (2006)

(analyzing history, Sosa, and legislative documents from the founding era to

postulate about which international common law torts are cognizable under 

the ATS); Sarah H. Cleveland, The Kiobel Presumption and Extraterritoriality,

52 COLUM. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 8, 17–19 (2013) (similar, but arguing for a more 

expansive view of which torts are cognizable, especially in the extraterritorial 

context); cf. also The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 700–01 (1900) 

(“International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and 

administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction . . . .”); Estate 

of Amergi ex rel. Amergi v. Palestinian Auth., 611 F.3d 1350, 1363–64 (11th 

Cir. 2010) (describing the type of international tort that federal courts may 

recognize under the ATS and Sosa). Plaintiffs raise this argument—that 

sovereign immunity may be unavailable for a category of jus cogens torts or 

other violations of the law of nations—but neither the reinstated panel nor the 

en banc opinion addresses it. 

Sosa also did not address sovereign immunity vis-à-vis the ATS. In that 

case, the Court only considered the claims of a foreign national named Alvarez43

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 43 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 Cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

Machain that he was kidnapped by another foreign national, Sosa, at the 

behest of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”). 542 U.S. at 

698–99. The Court ultimately held that the alleged international norm in 

question was insufficient to support a claim under the common law underlying 

the ATS. Id. at 712. Sosa’s language, however, hints at the idea that the ATS 

contemplated something broader than merely giving jurisdiction for an action 

Congress authorizes: “[T]here is every reason to suppose that the First 

Congress did not pass the ATS as a jurisdictional convenience to be placed on 

the shelf for use by a future Congress . . . .” Id. at 719. 

Unlike Sosa, here the United States was substituted for Mesa under the 

Westfall Act. Plaintiffs could have sought (but did not seek) federal-court 

review of the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment certification under the 

Westfall Act. See Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno, 515 U.S. 417, 420 (1995); 

see also Osborn v. Haley, 549 U.S. 225 (2007). Indeed, given Plaintiffs’ 

argument that jus cogens violations are not legitimate official acts, Plaintiffs 

may have had a strong basis for raising such a challenge.5 See, e.g., Yousuf, 

699 F.3d at 776 (distinguishing between status- and conduct-based immunity). 

Moreover, I note that the Special Concurrence does not take issue with the 

observation that Plaintiffs chose not to pursue this viable option for 

challenging Mesa’s conduct.

5 Thus, Plaintiffs’ concern that people in Mesa’s situation can commit wrongful acts 

with impunity is not accurate. A Bivens action does not stand alone as Plaintiffs’ last resort 

to seek review of this tragedy. In addition to challenging the substitution by the United 

States, Plaintiffs may be able to seek redress in Mexican courts or through Mexican 

diplomatic channels. See 18 U.S.C. § 3184. State processes may also be available. See 28 

U.S.C. § 2679(d)(3). Finally, Congress has exemplars both for establishing a compensation 

system for victims of United States government overseas torts, see 21 U.S.C. § 904, and also 

for waiving foreign sovereign immunity, see 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a).

44

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 44 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 Cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

I conclude that Plaintiffs’ argument on sovereign immunity and the ATS 

has some force. But in this area of great delicacy involving international 

diplomacy and United States sovereign immunity, I believe it is best to leave 

this issue to the Supreme Court or at least to a court more appropriately 

positioned to address these intricate issues. See Sosa, 542 U.S. at 725 (“[T]here 

are good reasons for a restrained conception of the discretion a federal court 

should exercise in considering a new cause of action of this kind.”); id. at 728 

(similar); see also id. at 750 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in 

the judgment) (decrying the notion that lower federal courts will be 

determining “perceived international norms”). Accordingly, I concur in the 

judgment of the en banc court.

45

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 45 Date Filed: 04/24/2015
No. 11-50792 Cons/w Nos. 12-50217 & 12-50301

JAMES E. GRAVES, JR., Circuit Judge, concurring in part:

I agree with the majority that the Fifth Amendment right was not clearly 

established at the time of the incident. But I also join, in part, the concurring 

opinion of Judge Prado, except to the extent that it adopts the en banc court’s 

reasons for denying the Fourth Amendment claim. Additionally, I join, in part, 

Judges Dennis and Haynes in concluding that the plaintiffs’ claims under the 

Fourth Amendment and the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) have force. However, I 

disagree with the conclusions of Judges Dennis and Haynes that this court 

should forego the adjudication of such claims.1 Instead, I would conclude that 

this court should carefully adjudicate the ATS and Fourth Amendment claims. 

See Sosa 542 U.S. 712-13, 724-26; and 28 U.S.C. § 1350. For these reasons, I 

respectfully concur with the majority opinion in part and join the separate 

opinions of Judges Dennis, Prado and Haynes in part.

1 I also disagree with Judge Haynes’ concurrence to the extent that it lists various 

other forms of review or redress which are, for the most part, unavailable, ineffective, or do 

not provide the same relief as a Bivens action. 

46

 

 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00513019452 Page: 46 Date Filed: 04/24/2015