Opinion ID: 482845
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: the district director's discretion

Text: 64 Passing their constitutional onslaught, the appellants next declaim that the district director abused his discretion in the circumstances of these cases. The argument itself, as it has been stated by the petitioners, is misleading and constitutes a kind of paralepsis: inasmuch as the decisions which we are called upon to consider were discretionary parole decisions made incident to exclusion proceedings, the applicable standard of review is not abuse of discretion at all, but is that limned by Kleindienst v. Mandel, supra. In Kleindienst, the Supreme Court noted the plenary sweep of Congress's power to make policies and rules for the exclusion of aliens. 408 U.S. at 765-67, 92 S.Ct. at 2582-84. The Court held that when the Executive exercises this power negatively on the basis of a facially legitimate and bona fide reason, the courts will neither look behind the exercise of that discretion, nor test it.... Id. at 770, 92 S.Ct. at 2585. Though the petitioners rail against this rubric as being overly obsequious in its deference to the Attorney General and the INS, it has been buttressed by more recent Supreme Court decisions. E.g., Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S. at 32, 103 S.Ct. at 329; Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U.S. at 794-95, 97 S.Ct. at 1479. Other courts of appeal have likewise applied the facially legitimate and bona fide reason benchmark when reviewing exercises of the Attorney General's discretion to grant or deny parole. See Perez-Perez v. Hanberry, 781 F.2d 1477, 1482 (11th Cir.1986); Sidney v. Howerton, 777 F.2d 1490, 1491 (11th Cir.1985); Garcia-Mir v. Smith, 766 F.2d 1478, 1485 (11th Cir.1985), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 1213, 89 L.Ed.2d 325 (1986); Jean v. Nelson, 727 F.2d at 977; Bertrand v. Sava, 684 F.2d at 212-13. Cf. Hotel & Restaurant Employees Union, Local 25 v. Attorney General, 804 F.2d 1256, 1271-72 (D.C.Cir.1986) (In challenge to INS's pursuit of alleged wavering policy concerning extensions of voluntary departure, court of appeals holds that: Where Congress has not seen fit to limit the agency's discretion to suspend enforcement of a statute ..., we cannot review facially legitimate exercises of the discretion.). 5 65 This is the standard constituted by Kleindienst and we follow it. In so doing we are mindful that, in the context of deportation proceedings, we have used an abuse of discretion yardstick as a means of gauging discretionary administrative action. See Williams v. INS, 773 F.2d 8, 9 (1st Cir.1985); Ananeh-Firempong v. INS, 766 F.2d 621, 626 (1st Cir.1985); Holley v. INS, 727 F.2d 189, 191 (1st Cir.1984). Leblanc v. INS, 715 F.2d 685, 691, 693 (1st Cir.1983); Vaughn v. INS, 643 F.2d 35, 37 (1st Cir.1981). It is well established, however, that deportable aliens are properly accorded greater rights than excludable aliens. Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S. at 25-27, 103 S.Ct. at 325-26. As stated by Justice O'Connor, once an alien gains admission to our country and begins to develop the ties that go with permanent residence, his constitutional status changes accordingly. Id. at 32, 103 S.Ct. at 329. When the act of the sovereign keeps a putatively unentitled person from something he never had, such deprivation (if it can be classified as a deprivation at all) is of a fundamentally different character than that which occurs when the government takes from a person--even a putatively unentitled person--something he theretofore enjoyed. Deportation of one already in residence in the United States is a deprivation of the latter sort, and abuse of discretion seems a fair and feasible approach when reviewing the deployment of discretion in such proceedings. Exclusion, however, falls within the former category. And, as have the Second and Eleventh Circuits, see supra, we conclude that the facially legitimate and bona fide reason standard should be applied to assay discretionary action in exclusion proceedings. 6 66 We thus scrutinize the record to ascertain whether Cobb advanced a facially legitimate and bona fide reason for withholding parole from these appellants. The answer to this inquiry is neither elusive nor doubtful. The district director denied each request for parole based on his determination that the appellants, without exception, fell considerably short of qualifying for relief under 8 C.F.R. Sec. 212.5(a). He concluded that the public interest would be disserved by parole, especially since the appellants had flouted established immigration procedures applicable to refugees seeking admission to the United States. The district director also ascertained that the petitioners were ineligible for release because of the substantial risk of elopement. And, freeing them from detention would, in Cobb's announced judgment, have created an ever-increasing law enforcement problem for the INS. 67 These findings are not without record support. They follow from Cobb's assessment that the petitioners' prospects for eventual admission by way of asylum were uniformly dim--an evaluation which has been borne out by administrative proceedings to this date. They spring, too, from the very facts surrounding the appellants' arrival in this country--facts which were, in each case, laden with cause for skepticism and suspicion. Three of the petitioners had no close family ties to the United States; the fourth, Saddozai, claimed a family tie of dubious legitimacy. 7 In no instance had the true identity of any petitioner been established by independent means. All of them had made profligate use of bogus documentation in the attempt to arrive and gain illicit entry. Despite their pleas of poverty, large sums of money had been squirrelled away and paid over to obtain apocryphal paperwork. According to the district director, the petitioners had demonstrated both an ability and a willingness to manipulate and to evade the immigration laws. That inference, given the appellants' course of conduct, was not only plausible, but compelling. 68 Given this chronicle of events and determinations, it would be presumptuous--and wrong--for us to say that the minimal requirements of Kleindienst v. Mandel, supra, were not met. The district director advanced numerous facially legitimate reasons for refusing parole to these appellants. These reasons appear bona fide, both in isolation and in juxtaposition to the administrative record. There is neither need nor warrant to proceed further: the decisions to deny parole to these four undocumented aliens were well within the wide sweep of the district director's discretion. This prong of the consolidated appeals is meritless.