Opinion ID: 6983223
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Substantive Due Process and Detention of a Resident Alien Validly Ordered Deported

Text: Zadvydas argues that as a resident alien he has greater rights under these circumstances than an excludable alien would, and thus that his current detention is a form of punishment unjustified by any criminal conviction despite the result in cases such as Mezei and Gisbert involving excludable aliens. However, there is little, if any, room for a distinction between the rights in this respect of excludable and resident aliens when their circumstances are so similar. Zadvydas’ detention is currently within the core area of the government’s plenary immigration power and thus does not violate substantive due process. The differences that exist in the rights of excludable and resident aliens are not the product of some bright line division that places excludable aliens beyond the pale of constitutional scrutiny. Excludable aliens are persons, entitled to some due process, and other, constitutional protections. The fact that they are entitled to a lesser degree of procedural due process in proceedings to determine whether they may enter the country stems ultimately not from their status as such, but rather from the nature of what is asserted. An attempt to enter this country is a request for a privilege rather than an assertion of right. See Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S. 21, 103 S.Ct. 321, 329, 74 L.Ed.2d 21 (1982). Denial of entry is thus not a deprivation of rights subject to procedural due process, and that, coupled with our deference to the other branches, mandates that we leave it to Congress to determine the procedures to be used in adjudicating such claims. See, e.g., Knauff, 70 S.Ct. at 313 (“Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned.”). In practice, this determination may foreclose most constitutional challenges on behalf of excludable aliens and create the impression that they have no constitutional rights. They have no procedural rights with regard to their entry, and most of their substantive rights will be constrained by the government’s need to control immigration. See, e.g., Gisbert, 988 F.2d at 1448. Since many will never enter the country or will do so only briefly, they will have little opportunity to assert Yick Wo-type rights in matters unconnected to the plenary power. However, to the extent that their substantive rights are infringed — either during the immigration process or while they are on parole subject to the entry fiction — in a manner that cannot be connected to the immigration power, they may assert such rights. See Lynch, 810 F.2d at 1374-75 ( excludable aliens are persons, and thus allowed to bring suit against allegedly brutal government agents since “we cannot conceive of any national interests that would justify the malicious infliction of cruel treatment”). Resident aliens, by virtue of their presence here, develop an interest in remaining that, to a certain extent, entitles them to procedural due process before they may be removed from this country. See, e.g., Landon, 103 S.Ct. at 329 (in a discussion limited to procedural due process rights, noting “once an alien gains admission to our country and begins to develop the ties that go with permanent residence his constitutional status changes accordingly. Our cases have frequently suggested that a continuously present resident alien is entitled to a fair hearing when threatened with deportation [citations], and, ... we developed the rule that a continuously present permanent resident alien has a right to due process in such a situation.”). 17 However, the fact that resident alien status entitles one to due process respecting the decision to deport does not mean that the plenary power concept is extinguished. On the contrary, the needs of the government are taken into account in evaluating such claims and the standard for evaluating procedures is thus lower than would be expected in analyzing the rights of a citizen with a like interest. See Landon, 103 S.Ct. at 330 (resident alien who has not severed her ties to the country is entitled to due process before being removed, but in evaluating procedures “it must weigh heavily in the balance that control over matters of immigration is a sovereign prerogative”); Galvan v. Press, 347 U.S. 522, 74 S.Ct. 737, 742, 98 L.Ed. 911 (1954) (noting that while deportation of a long term resident alien is drastic measure with consequences analogous to those stemming from a criminal conviction, plenary power precedent mandates nonap-plicability of the ex post facto clause); I.N.S. v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032, 104 S.Ct. 3479, 3483, 82 L.Ed.2d 778 (1984) (deportation, despite the weighty interests involved, is a civil proceeding and not subject to the same battery of procedural protections as would govern a criminal trial); United States ex rel. Bilokumsky v. Tod, 263 U.S. 149, 44 S.Ct. 54, 56, 68 L.Ed. 221 (1923) (involuntary confession admissible in deportation hearing). Nothing in these cases suggests that a resident alien has a broadly privileged constitutional status relative to excludable aliens, or is constitutionally entitled to more favorable treatment when both the right asserted and the governmental interest are identical to those in the parallel case of an excludable alien. 18 The constitutional rights of resident aliens may certainly be affected by the plenary power. See, e.g., Fong Yue Ting, 13 S.Ct. at 1026 (in case involving rights of a resident alien, distinguishing Yick Wo on the grounds that “[t]he question there was of the power of a state over aliens continuing to reside within its jurisdiction, not of the power of the United States to put an end to their residence in the country”); Wong Wing, 16 S.Ct. at 981 (drawing distinction between “the power of congress to protect, by summary methods, the country from the advent of aliens ... or to expel such if they have already found their way into our land, and unlawfully remain therein” and the decision to imprison aliens at hard labor for a term notwithstanding the ability to rapidly remove the alien from the national community). Both excludable and resident aliens have the right to be free of abuses that — while tangentially and remotely related to the immigration process — cannot be justified as in furtherance of immigration goals. See Lynch, 810 F.2d at 1375 (excludables); Wong Wing, 16 S.Ct. at 981 (resident). But both excluda-ble and resident aliens may come in conflict with the government’s sovereignty interests, and when this occurs their rights are constrained accordingly and to the same extent. As applied to detention pending removal, any here relevant constitutional distinction between excludable and resident aliens who have each been properly and finally determined to be removable would necessarily rest on a conclusion that excludable aliens are nonpersons wholly unprotected by the Constitution. However, that conclusion would conflict with our holding in Lynch and would require us to conclude that aliens in the position of those in Gisbert could be statutorily subjected to the rack and the screw, the Eighth Amendment notwithstanding. In the circumstances presented here, the national interest in effectuating deportation is identical regardless of whether the alien was once resident or excludable. When a former resident alien is — with the adequate and unchallenged procedural due process to which his assertion of a right to remain in this country entitles him — finally ordered deported, the decision has irrevocably been made to expel him from the national community. Nothing remains but to effectuate this decision. The need to expel such an alien is identical, from a national sovereignty perspective, to the need to remove an excludable alien who has been finally and properly ordered returned to his country of origin. See Fong Yue Ting, 13 S.Ct. at 1022 (the “power to exclude aliens, and the power to expel them, rest upon one foundation, are derived from one source, are supported by the same reasons, and are in truth but parts of one and the same power”). Whether the party to be deported is an excludable or a former resident, the United States has properly made its decision and earnestly wishes — if for no other reason than to save the cost of detention — to deport the detainee. And deportation itself is not punishment. See INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 104 S.Ct. at 3483 (“The purpose of deportation is not to punish past transgressions, but rather to put an end to a continuing violation of the immigration laws.”); American-Arab, 119 S.Ct. at 947 (“Even when deportation is sought because of some act the alien has committed, in principle the alien is not being punished for that act (criminal charges may be available for that separate purpose) but is merely being held to the terms under which he was admitted. And in all eases, deportation is necessary in order to bring to an end an ongoing violation of United States law.”). The fact that deportation cannot be immediately effectuated would not seem to recreate a distinction in the government’s interest regarding excludable aliens and resident aliens. When deportation is somehow blocked, the government must worry about two things. If the alien is not detained, he may commit crimes against the general population — crimes he would have been unable to commit had the decision to deport been effectuated. The whole point of earmarking criminal aliens for deportation or exclusion is that while we must tolerate a certain risk of recidivism from our criminal citizens, we need not be similarly generous when it comes to those who have not achieved citizenship. Their presence in this country is thus a continuing violation of the immigration laws, and if the preferred method of ending this violation is unavailable, detention may be an acceptable alternative mechanism to achieve the ultimate goal. See Gisbert, 988 F.2d at 1442 (noting protection of society from potentially dangerous alien was a rational, nonpunitive purpose for detention). See also Tran v. Caplinger, 847 F.Supp. 469, 476 (W.D.La.1993) (“This court can find no logical basis to conclude that the detention of a deportable alien under these circumstances is ‘punishment’ while the detention of an excludable alien is not”). 19 In addition, when deportation becomes feasible, the alien may frustrate the process by disappearing within the country, as so many have done. If the government’s efforts eventually make deportation feasible, it will be unable to effectuate its decision to expel if the alien has fled and gone underground in the interim. These interests are both equally potentially present regardless of whether an alien was once resident or excludable. Once the decision is made to deport a resident alien, then, there is little, if any, difference in the government’s interest in effectuating deportation of a resident alien and expulsion of an excludable alien. There is thus nothing to adequately distinguish the plenary interest from the one encountered in Gisbert. To the extent that Zadvydas had greater rights than the excludable aliens there, such rights were, so far as here relevant, procedural rights respecting the deportation decision, and have concededly been honored. We hold that the government may detain a resident alien based on either danger to the community or risk of flight while good faith efforts to effectuate the alien’s deportation continue and reasonable parole and periodic review procedures are in place. 20