Opinion ID: 2681508
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Extraterritorial Application

Text: The Appellants’ Fifth Amendment claim is not constrained by prior precedent on extraterritoriality, unlike their claim under the Fourth Amendment. First, the Fifth Amendment’s text does not limit the category of individuals entitled to protection. See, e.g., Lynch v. Cannatella, 810 F.2d 1363, 1374–75 (5th Cir. 1987). Whereas the Fourth Amendment applies only to “the 24 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00512681077 Page: 25 Date Filed: 06/30/2014 No. 11-50792 people,” a term of art, the Fifth Amendment applies by its express terms to “any person.” Id. Therefore, our court has concluded that “[e]xcludable aliens are not non-persons.” Id. This significantly different language leads us to the conclusion that Verdugo–Urquidez’s sufficient connections test, which provides a gloss for the term “the people,” does not apply in interpreting the extraterritorial application of the Fifth Amendment. Additionally, the Supreme Court has recognized some Fifth Amendment protections apply extraterritorially. See, e.g., Reid, 354 U.S. at 18–19 (plurality opinion); id. at 49 (Frankfurter, J., concurring) (concluding that, at least as to capital cases overseas, “the exercise of court-martial jurisdiction over civilian dependents in time of peace cannot be justified by Article I, considered in connection with the specific protections of Article III and the Fifth and Sixth Amendments”). Thus, whether the Fifth Amendment applies here depends on the objective factors and practical concerns we recognized above. See Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 766. The first relevant factor is the citizenship and status of the claimant. Inside U.S. territory, a claimant’s citizenship will ordinarily have no impact on whether the claimant is entitled to constitutional protection. But “[i]n cases involving the extraterritorial application of the Constitution, [the Court has] taken care to state whether the person claiming its protection is a citizen or an alien.” Verdugo–Urquidez, 494 U.S. at 275 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (citations omitted). “The distinction between citizens and aliens 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. Boumediene teaches that a claimant’s citizenship is not dispositive, as it provided an example of a limited “class of noncitizens” entitled to constitutional protection, i.e., those detained at Guantanamo Bay. But the focus on citizenship is still important given the significance of applying constitutional protections 25 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00512681077 Page: 26 Date Filed: 06/30/2014 No. 11-50792 abroad at all, let alone to noncitizens. Here, it is undisputed that Hernandez was a Mexican citizen with no connection to the United States. Yet, unlike the “enemy aliens” detained during the Allied Powers’ post-World War II occupation in Eisentrager, 339 U.S. at 765–66, or the “enemy combatants” held pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 734, 767, Hernandez was a civilian killed outside an occupied zone or theater of war. Thus, while Hernandez’s citizenship weighs against extraterritorial application, his status does not. The second factor requires us to look at the “nature of the sites” where the alleged violation occurred. In Boumediene, the Court examined the level of control the United States exerted over the site where the individual’s apprehension and detention occurred. The Court concluded that, although Guantanamo Bay was “technically outside the sovereign territory of the United States,” the United States “has maintained complete and uninterrupted control of the bay for over 100 years.” Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 764, 768. The court looked to the “political history” of Guantanamo and took into consideration the lease agreement permitting the United States to maintain control over Guantanamo. Id. at 764–65. By contrast, the Court reasoned that the United States control over Landsberg Prison in occupied Germany in the Eisentrager case was transient and that the United States was accountable to its “Allies for all activities occurring there.” Id. at 768. We therefore reject Agent Mesa’s argument that Eisentrager—which held that enemy aliens beyond the territorial jurisdiction of any court of the United States could not invoke the protections of the Fifth Amendment—compels a result in his favor. As mentioned above, Boumediene rejected such a formalistic reading of Eisentrager. Although de jure sovereignty “is a factor that bears upon which constitutional guarantees apply,” nothing “in Eisentrager says that de jure 26 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00512681077 Page: 27 Date Filed: 06/30/2014 No. 11-50792 sovereignty is or has ever been the only relevant consideration in determining the geographic reach of the Constitution.” Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 764. Based on the nature of the border area where the shooting occurred, we cannot say that the United States exercises no control. Unlike both Guantanamo and Landsberg Prison, this is not a case requiring constitutional application in a far-away location. Agent Mesa was standing inside the United States, an area very much within U.S. control, when he committed the act. Border Patrol agents exercise their official duties within feet of where the alleged constitutional violation occurred. In fact, agents act on or occasionally even across the border they protect. Amici for Appellants inform us that Border Patrol agents have reportedly fatally shot and killed individuals across the border in several incidents. See Br. of Amici Curiae Border Network for Human Rights, et al., in Support of Appellants, 8–12.9 Therefore, in a very blunt sense, Border Patrol agents exercise hard power across the border at least as far as their U.S.-based use of force injures individuals. Boumediene further instructs us to look at the political history of a location to understand how the United States might exercise control. Here, the control exercised in cross-border shootings reflects broader U.S. customs and border protection policies that expand U.S. control beyond the nation’s territorial 9 See also More Accounts Emerge Following Deadly Border Shooting, Nogales International, Jan. 6, 2011, http://perma.cc/Q335-QL34 (reporting that a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Mexican national Ramses Barron Torres, 17, who was standing in Nogales, Mexico); Office of Public Affairs, Dep’t of Justice, Federal Officials Close the Investigation into the Death of Ramses Barron-Torres, Aug. 9, 2013, http://perma.cc/6Z3U-4MWJ (concluding that Barron-Torres was “on the Mexico side of the border fence when he was shot”); Office of Public Affairs, Dep’t of Justice, Federal Officials Close the Investigation into the Death of Carlos LaMadrid, Aug. 9, 2013, http://perma.cc/H64L-AYD4 (declining to prosecute Border Patrol agent who fired at individual across border shot and killed U.S. citizen Carlos Madrid, 19, who was in the line of fire); R. Stickney, ACLU Calls for Probe in Border Shooting, NBC San Diego, June 22, 2011, http://perma.cc/TMD5-EMAQ (reporting that Border Patrol agent shot and killed Mexican national Jose Alfredo Yanez Reyes on Mexican side of border fence near San Diego, California). 27 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00512681077 Page: 28 Date Filed: 06/30/2014 No. 11-50792 borders. The Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol explains that U.S. border security policy “extends [the nation’s] zone of security outward, ensuring that our physical border is not the first or last line of defense, but one of many.” Securing Our Borders—Operational Control and the Path Forward: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Border and Maritime Security of the H. Comm. on Homeland Security, 112th Cong. 8 (2011) (prepared statement of Michael J. Fisher, Chief of U.S. Border Patrol). For example, Bureau of Customs and Border Protection officials are authorized to conduct “preinspection” examination and inspection of passengers for final determination of admissibility and crew “at the port or place in foreign territory.” 8 C.F.R. § 235.5(b); see also Ayelet Shachar, The Shifting Border of Immigration Regulation, 3 Stan. J. C.R. & C.L. 165, 174–77 (2007). Moreover, this recent articulation of extraterritorial policy appears to be only the latest manifestation in a long history of United States involvement beyond the U.S.-Mexico border. See Eva Bitran, Note, Boumediene at the Border? The Constitution and Foreign Nationals on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 49 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 229, 244–47 (2014) (collecting historical examples showing that United States “exerts and has exerted powerful influence over northern Mexico”). The Border Patrol’s exercise of control through its use of force at and across the border more closely resembles the control the United States exercised in Guantanamo than it does the control over Landsberg Prison in Eisentrager. First, U.S. power at the border is not transient. Boumediene distinguished Eisentrager because the control the United States exercised in Landsberg Prison in Eisentrager was transient. But here, Border Patrol agents are not representatives of a temporary occupational force. They are influential repeat players in a “constant” border relationship. See Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 768–69. Second, U.S. officers at the border are not “answerable to” U.S. border partners in the way Landsberg jailers were to Allied authorities. Id. at 768. In fact, the 28 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00512681077 Page: 29 Date Filed: 06/30/2014 No. 11-50792 Mexican government requests that U.S. government actors are held accountable in U.S. courts for actions on Mexican territory. Br. of Gov’t of the United Mexican States as Amici Curiae in Support of Appellants, 16. Therefore, this situation is different from the Allied occupation of Germany, where authorities shared accountability. In sum, even though the United States has no formal control or de facto sovereignty over the Mexican side of the border, the heavy presence and regular activity of federal agents across a permanent border without any shared accountability weigh in favor of recognizing some constitutional reach. Finally, we address the practical obstacles and other functional considerations extraterritorial application would present. We recognized some of the practical concerns already: the national interest in self-protection; the constant need for surveillance, often with advanced technologies; and concerns over varying degrees of reasonableness depending on an agent’s location at any given time. While these practical concerns counsel against the Fourth Amendment’s application, they do not carry the same weight in the Fifth Amendment context because different standards govern the respective claims. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, while, in this context, the Fifth Amendment protects against arbitrary conduct that shocks the conscience. The level of egregiousness required to satisfy the latter standard militates against protecting conduct that reaches it. We abstained from placing Fourth Amendment limits on actions across the border in part to allow officials to preserve our national interest in selfprotection. A reasonableness limitation would have injected uncertainty into the government’s decision-making process, perhaps resulting in adverse consequences for U.S. actions abroad. That interest, however, plays no role in determining whether an alien is entitled to protection against arbitrary, conscience-shocking conduct across the border. This principle protecting 29 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00512681077 Page: 30 Date Filed: 06/30/2014 No. 11-50792 individuals from arbitrary conduct is consistent with those our government has recognized internationally,10 and applying it here would hardly cause friction with the host government. The Mexican government submitted a brief seeking to “allay any concerns that . . . a ruling in the plaintiffs’ favor would interfere with Mexico’s sovereignty or otherwise create practical difficulties.” Br. of Gov’t of the United Mexican States as Amici Curiae in Support of Appellants 3. Because Agent Mesa was inside our territory when he allegedly acted unconstitutionally, the United States, like in Boumediene, “is, for all practical purposes, answerable to no other sovereign for its acts.” 553 U.S. at 770. If the Constitution does not apply here, the only check on unlawful conduct would be that which the Executive Branch provides. Cf. Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 765 (noting a concern that “the political branches have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will” and would represent “a striking anomaly in our tripartite system of government”). Indeed, a strict, territorial approach would allow agents to move in and out of constitutional strictures, creating zones of lawlessness. That approach would establish a perverse rule that would treat differently two individuals subject to the same conduct merely because one managed to cross into our territory. Significantly, recognizing extraterritorial application of the Fifth Amendment for conscience-shocking conduct would not force agents to change their conduct to conform to a newly articulated standard. We have already recognized that aliens inside our borders, even those found to be excludable, are entitled “to be free of gross physical abuse at the hands of state or federal officials.” Lynch, 810 F.2d at 1374; see also Martinez–Aguero, 459 F.3d at 626 (“Lynch plainly confers on aliens in disputes with border agents a right to be free 10 See, e.g., International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights art. 6(1), Mar. 23, 1976, 999 U.N.T.S. 171 (“Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”). 30 Case: 11-50792 Document: 00512681077 Page: 31 Date Filed: 06/30/2014 No. 11-50792 from excessive force, and no reasonable officer would believe it proper to beat a defenseless alien without provocation, as Martinez–Aguero alleges.”). To extend that right to those injured across the border by U.S. officers located in the United States would have the unremarkable effect of informing federal officials that they are also prohibited from arbitrarily inflicting harm in this new, but similar, context. We will enforce the applicable constitutional principle, unless textual, precedential, or practical barriers bar judicial redress of constitutional violations—that is, when enforcing it is not “impracticable and anomalous.” Boumediene, 553 U.S. at 759 (quoting Reid, 354 U.S. at 74 (Harlan, J., concurring)). Here it is not. We therefore hold that a noncitizen injured outside the United States as a result of arbitrary official conduct by a law enforcement officer located in the United States may invoke the protections provided by the Fifth Amendment.