Opinion ID: 858320
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The 1225(b) subclass.

Text: We next address whether the prolonged detention of “applicants for admission” under Section 1225(b) raises the 24 RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS same “serious constitutional concerns” that are implicated by prolonged detention of other detained aliens. The government argues that the 1225(b) subclass members enjoy lesser constitutional protections than other detained aliens. Of course, if the statute does not raise constitutional concerns, then there is no basis for employing the canon of constitutional avoidance. See Ma v. Ashcroft, 257 F.3d 1095, 1106–07 (9th Cir. 2001). The government emphasizes the “unique constitutional position of arriving aliens” to argue that prolonged detention of 1225(b) subclass members does not implicate constitutional concerns. This argument relies principally on Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezei (Mezei), 345 U.S. 206 (1953) and Barrera-Echavarria v. Rison, 44 F.3d 1441 (9th Cir. 1995) (en banc), superseded by statute as stated in Xi v. I.N.S., 298 F.3d 832, 837–38 (9th Cir. 2002)). In Mezei, the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to the multi-year detention on Ellis Island of an LPR returning from a 19-month trip abroad. See 345 U.S. at 214. Adverting to the now-defunct statutory distinction between “exclusion” and “deportation” proceedings, the Court held that: [A]liens who have once passed through our gates, even illegally, may be expelled only after proceedings conforming to traditional standards of fairness encompassed in due process of law . . . . But an alien on the threshold of initial entry stands on a different footing: Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned. Id. at 212 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). In Barrera-Echavarria, we applied Mezei to uphold the RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS 25 constitutionality of prolonged detention of excludable aliens under the pre-IIRIRA version of 8 U.S.C. § 1226(e). 44 F.3d at 1448. We held that the “entry fiction” doctrine, as explained by the Supreme Court, “squarely precludes a conclusion that [excludable aliens] have a constitutional right to be free from detention, even for an extended time.” Id. at 1449. It seems clear that many, if not most, members of the 1225(b) subclass would fall into the category of aliens described in Mezei and Barrera-Echavarria as entitled to limited due process protection. See Barrera-Echavarria, 44 F.3d at 1450 (“Mezei established what is known as the ‘entry fiction,’ which provides that although aliens seeking admission into the United States may physically be allowed within its borders pending a determination of admissibility, such aliens are legally considered to be detained at the border and hence as never having effected entry into this country . . . . Noncitizens who are outside United States territories enjoy very limited protections under the United States Constitution.”) (emphasis added) (internal quotations and citations omitted). Nonetheless, we have reason to question whether Mezei and Barrera-Echavarria are squarely apposite to the inquiry before us. First, both cases were decided under pre-IIRIRA law. Because the cases apply to the former category of “excludable aliens,” it is not clear that the class of aliens to whom Mezei and Barrera-Echavarria applied is coextensive with the 1225(b) subclass in this case. As we explained in Xi: The INA is no longer denominated in terms of “entry” and “exclusion.” IIRIRA replaced these terms with the broader concept of 26 RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS “admission.” Section 1101(a)(13), which formerly defined “entry” as “any coming of an alien into the United States, from a foreign port or place . . . ,” 8 U.S.C. [§] 1101(a)(13) (1994), now defines “admission” to mean “the lawful entry of [an] alien into the United States after inspection and authorization by an immigration officer,” 8 U.S.C. [§] 1101(a)(13)(A) (2002). Concomitantly, IIR IR A dropped the concept of “excludability” and now uses the defined term of “inadmissibility.” Although the grounds for being deemed inadmissible are similar to those for being deemed excludable, compare 8 U.S.C. § 1182 (1994) with 8 U.S.C. § 1182 (2002), there are substantial differences between the two statutes. 298 F.3d at 838. Of course, this does not undermine BarreraEchavarria’s reasoning as it relates to aliens in the 1225(b) subclass to whom the entry fiction clearly applies (likely the vast majority). But the Supreme Court has instructed that, where one possible application of a statute raises constitutional concerns, the statute as a whole should be construed through the prism of constitutional avoidance. See Clark, 543 U.S. at 380 (2005) (“It is not at all unusual to give a statute’s ambiguous language a limiting construction called for by one of the statute’s applications, even though other of the statute’s applications, standing alone, would not support the same limitation. The lowest common denominator, as it were, must govern.”). Thus, the dispositive question is not whether the government’s reading of § 1225(b) is permissible in some (or even most) cases, but rather whether there is any RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS 27 single application of the statute that calls for a limiting construction.9 Under current law, § 1225(b) applies to some LPRs returning from abroad who have not been absent for the prolonged period described in Mezei. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(13)(C) (setting forth six categories of LPRs who may be treated as seeking admission, only one of which 9 At oral argument, government counsel contended that the district court record is devoid of any evidence suggesting that members of the 1225(b) subclass include returning LPRs. This argument reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of class actions litigated under Rule 23(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, including this one. See Rodriguez I, 591 F.3d at 1125–26. “The key to the (b)(2) class is ‘the indivisible nature of the injunctive or declaratory remedy warranted— the notion that the conduct is such that it can be enjoined or declared unlawful only as to all of the class members or as to none of them.’” Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541, 2557 (2011) (quoting Richard A. Nagareda, Class Certification in the Age of Aggregate Proof, 84 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 97, 132 (2009)). It would be illogical for us to conclude that the government’s reading of the statute is permissible just because, by happenstance, there are currently no detainees in the Central District who possess the requisite constitutional status to render ICE’s preferred practice illegal. Nor could we countenance such a result in light of the Supreme Court’s admonition that, “when deciding which of two plausible statutory constructions to adopt, a court must consider the necessary consequences of its choice. If one of them would raise a multitude of constitutional problems, the other should prevail—whether or not those constitutional problems pertain to the particular litigant before the Court.” Clark, 543 U.S. at 380–81. In other words, if the canon of constitutional avoidance requires us to read the statute such that bond hearings are available to individuals who have been detained for six months, then under Clark such hearings must be available to everyone detained under the statute. 28 RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS relates to prolonged absences from U.S. territory).10 “It is well established that if an alien is a lawful permanent resident of the United States and remains physically present there, he is a person within the protection of the Fifth Amendment,” and an LPR whose absence is not prolonged is assimilated to that same constitutional status. Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding, 344 U.S. 590, 596 (1953). For instance, an LPR who left the United States briefly to undertake illegal activity abroad, such 10 Section 1101(a)(13)(C) provides: An alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States shall not be regarded as seeking an admission into the United States for purposes of the immigration laws unless the alien–

continuous period in excess of 180 days, (iii) has engaged in illegal activity after having departed the United States, (iv) has departed from the United States while under legal process seeking removal of the alien from the United States, including removal proceedings under this chapter and extradition proceedings, (v) has committed an offense identified in section 1182(a)(2) of this title, unless since such offense the alien has been granted relief under section 1182(h) or 1229b(a) of this title, or (vi) is attempting to enter at a time or place other than as designated by immigration officers or has not been admitted to the United States after inspection and authorization by an immigration officer. RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS 29 as alien smuggling, would clearly be included in the 1225(b) subclass; under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(13)(C)(iii), he would be treated as an alien seeking admission on account of having “engaged in illegal activity after having departed the United States.” See United States v. Tsai, 282 F.3d 690, 696 & n.5 (9th Cir. 2002). But in Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S. 21 (1982), the Supreme Court specifically held that an LPR arrested for alien smuggling upon return from a brief trip abroad is entitled to due process protection, specifically because Mezei is inapplicable in such a scenario. See id. at 34 (holding that Mezei “did not suggest that no returning resident alien has a right to due process,” and that “it does not govern this case, for Plasencia was absent from the country only a few days”). As such, it is clear that the 1225(b) subclass includes at least some aliens who are not subject to the entry fiction doctrine, and thus under Clark the statute must be construed with these aliens in mind.11 This conclusion is buttressed by the fact that the government’s position is facially inconsistent with our binding holding in Nadarajah. Nadarajah concerned an asylum seeker who had been granted relief but who remained detained pending review of his case by the Attorney General. 443 F.3d at 1071–75. Although we examined Nadarajah’s claims under the paradigm of Zadvydas, and therefore considered only the possibility of “indefinite” (as opposed to “prolonged”) detention, we nonetheless held that § 1225(b) is susceptible to a saving construction to avoid constitutional 11 This analysis also disposes of the government’s reliance on AlvarezGarcia v. Ashcroft, 378 F.3d 1094 (9th Cir. 2004), which involved an individual petition for review brought by an alien who entered the United States without inspection and thus clearly was subject to the doctrine described in Mezei and Barrera-Echavarria. See id. at 1095, 1097–98. 30 RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS concerns. See id. at 1076–78. While this analysis does not directly answer the central question presented by this appeal, i.e. whether bond hearings are required at the six month mark, it does undermine the government’s arguments in two important respects. First, the government argues that § 1225(b) is too unambiguous for the doctrine of constitutional avoidance to apply. But it is not clear how this could be so in light of Nadarajah, where we have already applied the canon to this very statute. Second, and relatedly, the government’s argument that there is no due process “floor” for the treatment of aliens subject to §1225(b) is difficult to reconcile with a binding decision that already construed the statute expressly to avoid constitutional concerns. Thus, read together, Plasencia, Clark, and Nadarajah suggest that we must construe § 1225(b) to avoid potential constitutional concerns raised by its application to LPRs who enjoy due process protection. With this premise in place, the likelihood of success of the 1225(b) subclass is determined by the same analysis applicable to the 1226(c) subclass, which we conclude has demonstrated a likelihood of success. To the extent our holdings in Tijani, Casas, and Diouf II require that we construe mandatory immigration detention authority as timelimited and that bond hearings occur when detention becomes “prolonged,” there is no basis for distinguishing between the two sub-classes in this regard. Indeed, if anything it would appear that the LPRs who fall within § 1225(b)’s purview should enjoy greater constitutional protections than criminal aliens who have already failed to win relief in their removal proceedings, as in Casas. See Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763, 770 (1950) (“The alien, to whom the United States has been traditionally hospitable, has been accorded a generous and ascending scale of rights as he increases his RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS 31 identity with our society. Mere lawful presence in the country creates an implied assurance of safe conduct and gives him certain rights; they become more extensive and secure when he makes preliminary declaration of intention to become a citizen, and they expand to those of full citizenship upon naturalization.”). Appellees suggest two potential ways we could apply the canon of constitutional avoidance in construing § 1225(b). First, we could simply read a bond hearing requirement into the statute, as we did with regard to § 1231(a)(6) in the Diouf opinions. See Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1089; Diouf v. Mukasey (Diouf I), 542 F.3d 1222, 1234 (9th Cir. 2008) (“We have specifically construed § 1231(a)(6) to permit release on bond.”) (citing Doan v. I.N.S., 311 F.3d 1160, 1162 (9th Cir. 2002)). This first suggestion, however, is problematic. For one thing, this reading would conflict with Department of Homeland Security regulations, at least as applied to some subclass members, because current regulations unambiguously strip IJs of the authority to “redetermine conditions of custody imposed by the Service with respect to” arriving aliens. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.19(h)(2)(i)(B). Moreover, it is difficult to distinguish the statute’s language from that of § 1226(c), which also provides that aliens who fall within its scope “shall” be detained and which the Supreme Court has characterized as mandating detention. See Demore, 538 U.S. at 513–14; compare 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c)(1) (“The Attorney General shall take into custody any alien who . . . .”), with id. § 1225(b)(2)(A) (“[I]f the examining immigration officer determines that an alien seeking admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted, the alien shall be detained . . . .”). Appellees argue that the existence of the parole scheme itself undermines the government’s mandatory construction of the 32 RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS statute, but § 1226(c) also contains a statutory exception to mandatory detention. See 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c)(2) (“The Attorney General may release an alien described in paragraph (1) only if the Attorney General decides . . . that release of the alien from custody is necessary to provide protection to a witness, a potential witness, a person cooperating with an investigation into major criminal activity, or an immediate family member or close associate of a witness, potential witness, or person cooperating with such an investigation, and the alien satisfies the Attorney General that the alien will not pose a danger to the safety of other persons or of property and is likely to appear for any scheduled proceeding.”). If anything, the existence of these narrow and explicit exceptions to both statutes’ reach is evidence of their drafters’ intent to make detention mandatory in all cases to which the exceptions are inapplicable. Thus, Appellees’ first suggested construction is not a “fairly possible” reading of the statute as required for the canon of constitutional avoidance to apply. Appellees’ second suggested construction fares considerably better. Under this approach, we would simply follow Casas and hold that, to the extent detention under §1225(b) is mandatory, it is implicitly time-limited. This approach fits more naturally into our case law, which has suggested that after Demore, brief periods of mandatory immigration detention do not raise constitutional concerns, but prolonged detention—specifically longer than six months—does. This reading also has the advantage of uniformity, which the Supreme Court has suggested is an important value in matters of statutory construction. Cf. Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 680 (“In order to limit the occasions when courts will need to make the difficult judgments called for by the recognition of this necessary Executive leeway, it is practically necessary to recognize a presumptively RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS 33 reasonable period of detention . . . . [F]or the sake of uniform administration in the federal courts, six months is the appropriate period.”). Of course, the government’s detention authority does not completely dissipate at six months; rather, the mandatory provisions of § 1225(b) simply expire at six months, at which point the government’s authority to detain the alien would shift to § 1226(a), which is discretionary and which we have already held requires a bond hearing. See Casas, 535 F.3d at 948. Finally, we note that the discretionary parole system available to § 1225(b) detainees is not sufficient to overcome the constitutional concerns raised by prolonged mandatory detention. Indeed, any argument to that effect is clearly foreclosed by our holding in Singh, which held that bond hearings must be held before a neutral IJ with the government bearing the burden of proof by clear and convincing evidence. See 638 F.3d at 1203–04. The parole process is purely discretionary and its results are unreviewable by IJs. Cf. Casas, 535 F.3d at 949 (“We hold that the government may not detain a legal permanent resident such as Casas for a prolonged period without providing him a neutral forum in which to contest the necessity of his continued detention.” (emphasis added)). Moreover, release decisions are based on humanitarian considerations and the public interest, see 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A), not whether the alien “is a flight risk or will be a danger to the community.” Singh, 638 F.3d at 1203 (quoting Casas, 535 F.3d at 951). To the extent the principles of Tijani, Casas and Diouf II are applicable to the 1225(b) subclass, the constitutionally grounded hearing requirements set forth in Singh are also applicable. The government does not, and could not, contend that discretionary parole satisfies Singh. Thus, Appellees are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that § 1225(b) 34 RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS must be construed to authorize only six months of mandatory detention, after which detention is authorized by § 1226(a) and a bond hearing is required.