Opinion ID: 783278
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Flexible Concept of Custodian in Immigration Habeas Cases

Text: 53 As the discussion heretofore illustrates, neither Supreme Court case law nor our own precedent states a clear path toward identifying the proper respondent or respondents in an immigration detainee's habeas petition. What we do glean from these cases and others is that, while a petitioner's immediate physical custodian is typically a proper respondent in traditional habeas petitions, the statutory custodian requirement of 28 U.S.C. § 2241 is sufficiently flexible to permit the naming of respondents who are not immediate physical custodians if practicality, efficiency, and the interests of justice so demand. See Ortiz-Sandoval, 81 F.3d at 896(Prompt resolution of prisoners' claims is a principal function of habeas.); Dunn v. U.S. Parole Comm'n, 818 F.2d 742, 744 (10th Cir.1987) (as long as the petitioner names as respondent a person or entity with power to release him, a court should not avoid reaching the merits of his petition); Lee v. United States, 501 F.2d 494, 503 n. 9 (8th Cir.1974) (Webster, J., concurring) ([W]e have consistently rejected interpretations of the habeas corpus statute that would suffocate the writ in stifling formalisms or hobble its effectiveness with the manacles of arcane and scholastic procedural requirements.) 54 The circumstances surrounding the immigration-related detention of aliens demand such flexibility. Although held at the behest of federal authorities, immigration detainees are physically detained in a host of institutions, ranging from specialized immigration detention centers to federal prisons to state and local prisons and jails. See Michael Welch, Detained: Immigration Laws and the Expanding INS Jail Complex 108 (2002) (due to limited capacity in INS detention centers, more than 10,000 immigration detainees are housed in 900 state prisons and local jails); Julie Sullivan, Illegal Immigrants Are Dumped into a Secret Network of Prisons, The Oregonian, Dec. 10, 2000, at A1 (the INS [f]arms out more than half the 20,050 people it jails daily to a haphazard network of 1,940 private state prisons and county jails); Human Rights Watch, Introduction, in Locked Away: Immigration Detainees in Jails in the United States (Sept.1998) [hereinafter Locked Away ] (almost 60% of INS detainees are held in local jails). 55 When immigration detainees are held in state and local institutions — as they frequently are — a writ directed to the warden of the institution would make little legal sense, as the wardens' control over immigration detainees in their institutions results from their limited contractual arrangements with federal authorities. Although local and state authorities may contract with federal agencies to house, maintain, and guard detainees, they do not have any power to release detainees except if explicitly commanded to do so by federal authorities. It is therefore not logical to demand that an immigration detainee's petition be directed to a local or state warden who in reality has no legal power and, often, little actual power to bring forth the body of the detainee. See Roman v. Ashcroft, 162 F.Supp.2d 755, 760-61 (N.D.Ohio 2001) (noting warden's minimal to non-existent role in producing the petitioner's body for the purpose of modern habeas proceedings); Rachel E. Rosenbloom, Is the Attorney General the Custodian of an INS Detainee?, 27 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 543, 575 (2002) (noting that the Supreme Court focused in Braden on the respondent's ability to free the petitioner from legal, not physical, restraint). 56 Nor is it practical or in the interests of justice to apply rigidly the immediate physical custodian rule to immigration detainees' habeas petitions. Immigration detainees are frequently transferred among federal, state, and local institutions across the country. See Locked Away, supra, at 33-35(discussing frequent transfers of INS detainees). 5 By the time a district court judge is able to consider a habeas petition filed in her court, the petitioner may already have been moved out of the court's territorial jurisdiction, thereby necessitating time-consuming transfer or dismissal of the petition if the immediate custodian rule is strictly applied. See, e.g., Rumierz v. INS, 2000 WL 1920003 (D.R.I.Dec. 27, 2000) (district court determined that it lacked personal jurisdiction of habeas petition filed by immigration detainee transferred to five different institutions over the course of five years when petitioner was transferred to a detention center in New Jersey); Rosenbloom, supra, at 549. If detainees were permitted only to file their habeas petitions against their immediate physical custodian, and hence, under personal jurisdiction rules could only file in the district in which they were detained (so that their custodian would be within reach of the court's process,) expedient resolution of their habeas claims would be greatly hampered. 57 When transferred, immigration detainees are often relocated to an area of the country far from the contacts and resources they enjoyed while living in the United States. Detention centers are frequently located in rural areas, far from the location of evidence relevant to the detainee's petition. See Locked Away, supra, at 22. The isolated and/or distant location of detainees may severely cripple their ability to obtain and be represented by counsel. For example, if the California attorney of an alien formerly domiciled in California but now detained in rural Oakdale, Louisiana, is only permitted to litigate her client's petition in the District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, the cost of travel and other expenses could prove fatal to the feasibility of the representation. See Rosenbloom, supra, at 549-50(discussing logistical barriers to representation of aliens detained in remote areas); Sullivan, supra (describing case in which legal aid organization could not afford to represent alien after he was transferred to a detention center in Alabama); Locked Away, supra, at 22-24(describing hindrances to legal representation of aliens). 58 Moreover, out-of-state attorneys may be constrained by an individual state's or court's pro hac vice rules limiting the ability of out-of-state attorneys to practice. See Rosenbloom, supra, at 550. Although a more flexible custodian rule in immigration cases might not completely resolve these difficulties, it would better account for the reality of the frequently-changing and often far-flung locations in which aliens are detained. 59 Finally, there are indications that the district courts in areas where immigration detention centers are located have been flooded with detainee habeas petitions. This influx may seriously threaten some district courts' ability to consider petitions in a reasonably prompt manner. See, e.g., Emejulu v. INS, 989 F.2d 771, 772 (5th Cir.1993) (per curiam) (noting that administrative delays in processing deportations at the Oakdale INS facility produce an atypical and unanticipated volume of habeas petitions that is beyond the capability of the district court [for the Western District of Louisiana] to process in a timely fashion). Although refusing adherence to a strict immediate physical custodian rule might still result in larger concentrations of habeas petitions filed in parts of the country where more aliens reside, such flexibility would go a long way towards reducing unmanageable burdens in the very few district courts in which INS facilities are located and the consequent delay facing parties to habeas proceedings before them. 60 A more flexible approach toward naming a respondent need not open the door to forum shopping by petitioners. District courts may use traditional venue considerations to control where detainees bring habeas petitions. See Braden, 410 U.S. at 493-94, 93 S.Ct. 1123(traditional venue considerations in determining the proper venue for a habeas action include: where the material events took place; where records and witnesses pertinent to the petitioner's claim are likely to be found; the convenience of the parties); Henderson, 157 F.3d at 128([T]here is reason to think that strict application of `traditional principles of venue' in alien habeas cases might adequately control the forum shopping in which aliens might try to engage were the Attorney General to be designated an appropriate respondent.). 61 Nor would such an approach gut the immediate custodian rule as applied to traditional habeas petitions brought by federal criminal prisoners. Unlike the First and Third Circuits, we see significant differences between the situation of federal criminal prisoners and that of immigration detainees. The government's heavy reliance on local jails, rather than federal institutions, to house immigration detainees necessarily results in a different concept of custodian, one based more on the legal reality of control than the technicalities of who administers on a day-to-day basis the facility in which an individual is detained. 62 Also, although the logistical problems posed by the transferring of detainees and isolated rural detention locations are not unique to immigration habeas cases, the frequency of transfers and the particularly scattershot distribution of aliens in local jails across the nation 6 exacerbate obstacles to bringing habeas petitions. In particular, the muddled custodial circumstances created by the detention of persons via contract arrangements between federal immigration authorities and state and local facilities poses a particular problem for an immigration detainee's identification of a custodian who has the power to direct his or her release. 63 Finally, we observe that, under Ortiz-Sandoval, we have already disagreed with the First Circuit's conclusion that the immediate custodian rule must be applied even when it fails to facilitate the efficient administration of justice. 81 F.3d at 896. Because logical, equitable, and efficiency considerations militate against applying the immediate custodian approach to designating a respondent, we proceed to determine who is appropriately designated as respondent in habeas petitions brought by immigration detainees.