Opinion ID: 4564885
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Failure to Find or Analyze Systematic

Text: Error Finally, we come to the most fundamental error in the district court’s analysis: the absence of any findings on or an assessment of systemic error in ICE’s probable cause determinations based on searches of electronic databases. The Database Claim that Plaintiffs raise is a challenge to a system of databases on which ICE relies to issue detainers from the Central District for class members. Thus, to find for Plaintiffs on this claim, it was not enough for the district court to identify errors in individual databases on which ICE relies. Instead, the district court had to make findings about and explain how this system of databases results in “unreliable” probable cause determinations. Herring, 555 U.S. at 146; see also Evans, 514 U.S. at 17 (“Surely it would not be reasonable for the policy to rely, say, on a recordkeeping system . . . that has no mechanism to ensure 60 GONZALEZ V. USICE its accuracy over time and that routinely leads to false arrests.”). Unreliable here means that ICE routinely issues immigration detainers without reasonably trustworthy evidence of removability. As the experiences of Gonzalez and other individuals who are not removable but have been subject to an immigration detainer underscores, unreliability has tangible consequences. One way to assess the trustworthiness of ICE’s system is to quantify these unlawful arrests and use them to determine the nature and extent of any systematic error. We are unable, however, to identify any findings by the district court of systematic error in the issuance of detainers from the Central District, let alone a reasoned analysis on this issue. To be sure, the district court briefly touched on “the effect of ICE’s reliance on the databases for probable cause determinations.” Gonzalez, 416 F. Supp. 3d at 1011. Focusing on data from when PERC relied on fewer databases, the court observed that PERC issued some 12,797 detainers between May 2015 and February 2016. Id. Of these detainers, ICE lifted 771 detainers because the individuals were either U.S. citizens or otherwise not subject to removal and, of those, 42 were U.S. citizens. Id. But the court did not translate this data into findings about detainer lift rates that might illuminate whether the Government’s system of databases routinely results in the Government issuing detainers for class members who are not removable. 25 Nor did the district court identify any evidence 25 Although the parties dispute the lift rates of this data and whether the true error rate is higher, it is not our role to make factual findings. GONZALEZ V. USICE 61 of lift or error rates based on the system of databases on which ICE actually relied as of December 2017. Relatedly, the court failed to account for or examine systematic error in its analysis of whether the Government’s database practices violate the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 1017–20. Even if an individual database provides incomplete information, other databases may compensate for those weaknesses, resulting in a sufficiently reliable accumulation of evidence to furnish probable cause. Although the court’s finding of a Fourth Amendment violation turned on error in individual databases in light of case law concerning individual databases, the fact of such error in individual databases here could not lead to the conclusion that ICE’s system of databases routinely fails to provide reasonably trustworthy evidence of removability. It may be that despite our disagreements with the district court’s analysis here, the court will ultimately be proven correct about the unreliability of ICE’s system of databases. But we cannot take the laboring oar on resolving factual issues and performing legal analysis that the district court never did when it found in favor of Plaintiffs on the Database Claim and permanently enjoined the Government from relying solely on searches of electronic databases to issue immigration detainers from the Central District. See Gonzales v. Thomas, 547 U.S. 183, 185 (2006) (per curiam). When a district court has applied the wrong legal standard, “we ordinarily remand the case so that it may apply the correct one in the first instance.” Kirkpatrick v. Chappell, 872 F.3d 1047, 1058 (9th Cir. 2017). In light of the foregoing errors, the district court abused its discretion when it entered the Database Injunction. We reverse and vacate the judgment and injunction on the Database Claim, and remand for the district court to 62 GONZALEZ V. USICE reconsider the claim, including by making additional findings of fact as are necessary to properly resolve it. VI. The Gerstein Claim Finally, we come to Plaintiffs’ cross appeal concerning the district court’s grant of summary judgment for the Government on the Gerstein claim of the Judicial Determination Class. The class is defined, in relevant part, to include those individuals detained pursuant to a detainer for longer than 48 hours. The legal contention undergirding the Gerstein claim is that the Fourth Amendment requires prompt review of a probable cause determination of removability “by an independent, neutral official who is not engaged in law enforcement activities” to justify detention pursuant to an immigration detainer. The district court thought that Gerstein was inapposite because Gerstein arose in the criminal context rather than the civil immigration context. The district court erred in concluding so, and thus we reverse on this issue. In Gerstein v. Pugh, the Supreme Court considered the legality of state law criminal procedures, which permitted a person arrested without a warrant and charged by a prosecutor’s information to be jailed pending trial without any opportunity for a probable cause determination. 420 U.S. at 116. In holding this procedure to be unconstitutional, the Court explained that it “has required that the existence of probable cause be decided by a neutral and detached magistrate whenever possible” “[t]o implement the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unfounded invasions of liberty and privacy[.]” Id. at 112. The Court explained that a “neutral and detached magistrate” is one who is “independent of police and prosecution.” Id. at 112–13, 118. The Court recognized that “a policeman’s on-the-scene assessment of probable cause provides legal GONZALEZ V. USICE 63 justification for arresting a person suspected of crime, and for a brief period of detention to take the administrative steps incident to arrest.” Id. at 113–14. But “[o]nce the suspect is in custody, however, the reasons that justify dispensing with the magistrate’s neutral judgment evaporate.” Id. at 114. “When the stakes are [as] high” as “prolonged detention,” “the detached judgment of a neutral magistrate is essential if the Fourth Amendment is to furnish any meaningful protection from unfounded interference with liberty.” Id. Thus, “the Fourth Amendment requires a judicial determination of probable cause as a prerequisite to extended restraint of liberty following arrest.” Id. That determination must be “timely.” Id. at 126. The Court elaborated on the timeliness aspect of Gerstein in County of Riverside v. McLaughlin. The Court explained that “[a] . . . judicial determination[] of probable cause within 48 hours of arrest will, as a general matter, comply with the promptness requirement of Gerstein.” 500 U.S. at 56. “Where an arrested individual does not receive a probable cause determination within 48 hours, the calculus changes. In such a case, the arrested individual does not bear the burden of proving an unreasonable delay.” Id. at 57. Instead, the government bears the burden “to demonstrate the existence of a bona fide emergency or other extraordinary circumstance.” Id. The critical question here is whether the Fourth Amendment principle that Gerstein articulated applies to the civil immigration context. The answer to this question is necessarily “yes.” The Supreme Court confirmed long ago that any detention of a suspected alien “must be based on consent or probable cause” that the person is in fact an alien. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. at 881–82. In short, the “broad congressional power over immigration . . . cannot diminish 64 GONZALEZ V. USICE the Fourth Amendment rights of citizens who may be mistaken for aliens.” Id. at 884. It necessarily follows that the Fourth Amendment requires a prompt probable cause determination by a neutral and detached magistrate to justify detention beyond that which may be initially justified by any probable cause determination of removability. We are not persuaded by the Government’s objections to the application of Gerstein in this context. 26 The Government argues that immigration detainers are exempt from Gerstein based on the Supreme Court’s observation in a different context that “[a] deportation hearing is a purely civil action to determine the eligibility to remain in the country” and thus “various protections that apply in the context of a criminal trial do not apply in a deportation hearing.” Immigration & Naturalization Serv. v. LopezMendoza, 468 U.S. 1032, 1038 (1984). Lopez-Mendoza, however, has no bearing on whether Gerstein applies to arrests or detention for civil immigration purposes. That case concerned the application of the judge-made exclusionary rule—a “prudential doctrine” that concerns “an issue separate from the question whether the Fourth Amendment rights of the party seeking to invoke the rule were violated.” Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 236, 244 (2011) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The Government’s reliance on Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217 (1960), as a basis for not applying Gerstein here is also unavailing. In Abel, the Supreme Court opined that, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, immigration 26 We summarily reject the Government’s reliance on United States v. Tejada, 255 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2001), a decision which concerned the application of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 5(a). Id. at 2. That decision is irrelevant to the constitutional issue here. GONZALEZ V. USICE 65 authorities may arrest individuals for civil immigration removal purposes pursuant to an administrative arrest warrant issued by an executive official, rather than by a judge. Id. at 230–34. Although an immigration detainer is not an administrative warrant, we will assume that Abel nevertheless applies here. Even with that assumption, Abel is of no help. Nothing in Gerstein, or the principle that it articulated, requires review of a probable cause determination by an Article III judge. See, e.g., Shadwick v. City of Tampa, 407 U.S. 345, 350 (1972) (allowing “neutral and detached” municipal court clerks to issue arrest warrants). Plaintiffs concede here that they do not claim that the Fourth Amendment requires that an Article III judge make a probable cause determination. Instead, they ask only for review by a sufficiently detached and neutral executive official, such as an immigration judge. We have previously acknowledged the permissibility of such review. Flores v. Meese, 942 F.2d 1352, 1358, 1364 (9th Cir. 1991) (requiring immigration judges to “determine probable cause for [an immigration] arrest”), rev’d on other grounds by Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292 (1993). And such review is otherwise consistent with Abel’s recognition that Congress may delegate certain decisions to executive officials in the immigration context without violating the Fourth Amendment. Finally, the Government relies on our decision in Rhoden v. United States, 55 F.3d 428 (9th Cir. 1995), a case concerning a border detention. We do not understand how Rhoden affects whether Gerstein applies to the immigration detainers at issue here. Properly understood, Rhoden concerns whether the unique circumstances of a particular type of detention affects the timing of a probable cause 66 GONZALEZ V. USICE determination by a detached and neutral magistrate, not whether such a determination is required at all. We acknowledged there that “[i]n the context of a criminal arrest, a detention of longer than 48 hours without a probable cause determination violates the Fourth Amendment as a matter of law in the absence of a demonstrated emergency or other extraordinary circumstance.” Id. at 432 n.7 (citing McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 44). But we explained that “border detentions involve a distinct set of considerations and require different administrative procedures.” Id. With these unique circumstances in mind, we remanded Rhoden for additional factfinding regarding the reasonableness of the detention without a probable cause hearing. Id. at 432. Unlike Rhoden, this case does not concern border detention. We do not otherwise see what unique set of considerations could apply to the issuance of immigration detainers to individuals who are already in the custody of a state or local LEA. In short, we conclude that the district court erred when it granted summary judgment for the Government on the Judicial Determination Class’s Gerstein claim based on the conclusion that Gerstein does not apply to the civil immigration context. Detaining persons for more than 48 hours pursuant to an immigration detainer implicates Gerstein. We therefore reverse and remand for the district court to apply the correct legal standard in the first instance. 27 See Kirkpatrick, 872 F.3d at 1058; Zetwick v. County of Yolo, 850 F.3d 436, 442 (9th Cir. 2017). 27 Remand is especially appropriate here because, in the time since the district court considered Plaintiffs’ Gerstein claim, the Government has changed its immigration detainer policy to require the issuance of an administrative warrant alongside any immigration detainer. Although Plaintiffs argue that this policy still violates Gerstein, the district court GONZALEZ V. USICE 67