Opinion ID: 4523207
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001)

Text: We turn first to the Supreme Court’s decision in Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001). Zadvydas is central to understanding our court’s application of the canon of constitutional avoidance to all the immigration detention statutes, as well as to understanding the Court’s decision in Jennings. In Zadvydas, the Court considered a federal habeas challenge to detention pursuant to § 1231(a)(6) brought by aliens with criminal convictions whom the government had detained beyond § 1231(a)(2)’s initial 90-day mandatory detention period. 533 U.S. at 682. The question before the Court was whether, beyond the initial removal period, § 1231(a)(6) authorized indefinite detention or only detention for a period reasonably necessary to secure the alien’s removal. Id. Invoking the canon of constitutional avoidance, the Court rejected the government’s argument that § 1231(a)(6) sets no limit on the permissible length of detention beyond the removal period. Id. at 689. The Court reasoned first that “[a] statute permitting indefinite detention of an alien would raise a serious constitutional problem” under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause given the physical liberty at issue, the potentially permanent civil confinement the statute could authorize, and the limited “procedural protections available to the alien” pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 241.4(d)(1) (2001), pursuant to which “the alien bears the burden of proving he is not dangerous[.]” Id. at 690−92. Against the backdrop of these constitutional concerns, the Court could not find in § 1231(a)(6)’s text a “clear indication of congressional intent to grant the Attorney General the 18 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR power to hold indefinitely an alien ordered removed.” Id. at 697. The Court explained that the statute’s use of the word “may” in the phrase “may be detained” is ambiguous and “does not necessarily suggest unlimited discretion.” Id. The Court thus “read an implicit limitation into” § 1231(a)(6), “limit[ing] an alien’s post-removal-period detention to a period reasonably necessary to bring about that alien’s removal from the United States.” Id. at 689. Faced with the habeas petitions in that case, the Court outlined how a habeas court should apply this construction of § 1231(a)(6). Id. at 699. When removal is no longer reasonably foreseeable, § 1231(a)(6) no longer authorizes continued detention. Id. at 699−700. “In that case, . . . the alien’s release may and should be conditioned on any of the various forms of supervised release that are appropriate in the circumstances, and the alien may no doubt be returned to custody upon a violation of those conditions.” Id. at 700 (citing 8 U.S.C. §§ 1231(a)(3); 8 C.F.R. § 241.5)). “[H]av[ing] reason to believe . . .that Congress previously doubted the constitutionality of detention for more than six months,” the Court recognized six months as a presumptively reasonable length of detention “for the sake of uniform administration in the federal courts.” Id. at 701. “After this 6-month period, once the alien provides good reason to believe that there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future, the Government must respond with evidence sufficient to rebut that showing.” Id. The Court qualified that this “does not mean that every alien not removed must be released after six months,” but rather “an alien may be [detained] until it has been determined that there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future.” Id. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 19 B. This Court’s Pre-Jennings Constructions of the Immigration Detention Statutes Although Zadvydas concerned only § 1231(a)(6), that decision led this court to “grapple[] in piece-meal fashion with whether the various immigration detention statutes may authorize indefinite or prolonged detention of detainees and, if so, may do so without providing a bond hearing.” Rodriguez v. Robbins, 804 F.3d 1060, 1077 (9th Cir. 2015) (Rodriguez III) (quoting Rodriguez v. Robbins, 715 F.3d 1127, 1134 (9th Cir. 2013) (Rodriguez II) (further quoting Rodriguez v. Hayes, 591 F.3d 1105, 1114 (9th Cir. 2010) (Rodriguez I))). 3 Five decisions are relevant here. First, in Casas-Castrillon v. Department of Homeland Security, 535 F.3d 942 (9th Cir. 2008), our court considered a habeas petition from a lawful permanent resident whom the government had detained for nearly seven years without providing an adequate opportunity to challenge his detention. Id. at 944. We recognized that § 1226(a) 3 Our court also identified the Court’s decision in Demore v. Kim, 538 U.S. 510 (2003), as important to our constructions of the immigration detention statutes to address the constitutional issue of prolonged detention. See Rodriguez III, 804 F.3d at 1077. Demore, however, is the earliest example of the Court’s rejection of our court’s reliance on Zadvydas to construe the other immigration detention statutes. We had construed § 1226(c) to require the government to provide a bail hearing with reasonable promptness to determine whether the alien was a flight risk or a danger to the community. Kim v. Ziglar, 276 F.3d 523, 539 (9th Cir. 2002). Foreshadowing its reasoning in Jennings, the Court rejected that construction by distinguishing Zadvydas’s focus on § 1231(a)(6) as “materially different” from § 1226(c), noting that whereas the statute at issue in Zadvydas involved “‘indefinite’ and ‘potentially permanent’ detention,” § 1226(c) involved detention “of a much shorter duration” with a “definite termination point.” Demore, 538 U.S. at 527–29. 20 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR authorized the government to detain Casas-Castrillon because he remained capable of being removed, id. at 948−49, but we also recognized that Casas-Castrillon’s nearly seven-year detention posed a “constitutional question,” id. at 950. We declined to resolve that question because we could “find no evidence that Congress intended to authorize the long-term detention of aliens such as Casas[- Castrillon] without providing them access to a bond hearing before an immigration judge.” Id. Relying on an earlier decision of our court that applied the canon of constitutional avoidance to § 1226(c), we determined that prolonged detention under § 1226(a) is “permissible only where the Attorney General finds such detention individually necessary by providing the alien with an adequate opportunity to contest the necessity of his detention.” Id. at 951 (relying on Tijani v. Willis, 430 F.3d 1241, 1242 (9th Cir. 2005)). 4 We recognized that “[§] 1226(a), unlike § 1226(c), provides such authority for the Attorney General to conduct a bond hearing and release the alien on bond or detain him if necessary to secure his presence at removal.” Id. We held that “§ 1226(a) must be construed as requiring the Attorney General to provide the alien with such a hearing” given the constitutional 4 In Tijani, our court addressed the government’s detention of an alien for two years and eight months pursuant to § 1226(c). 430 F.3d at 1242. We invoked Zadvydas to question the permissibility of a congressional statute authorizing detention “of this duration for lawfully admitted resident aliens who are subject to removal.” Id. (citing Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 690). We distinguished Demore as a case “where the alien conceded deportability,” and then proceeded to apply the canon of constitutional avoidance to construe § 1226(c) to conditionally grant habeas relief unless the government provided the alien with a bond hearing before an IJ where the government bore the burden of justifying continued detention. Id. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 21 doubtfulness of prolonged detention without an individualized determination of dangerousness or flight risk. Id. (citing Tijani, 430 F.3d at 1242) (emphasis in original). “Thus an alien is entitled to be released on bond unless the ‘government establishes that he is a flight risk or will be a danger to the community.’” Id. (quoting Tijani, 430 F.3d at 1242). Second, in Diouf II, we reversed a district court’s denial of a preliminary injunction that would have required individualized bond hearings pursuant to § 1231(a)(6). 634 F.3d at 1084. We “extend[ed] Casas-Castrillon” to § 1231(a)(6), id. at 1086, such that “individuals detained [there]under . . . are entitled to the same procedural safeguards against prolonged detention as individuals detained under § 1226(a),” id. at 1084. We determined that “prolonged detention under § 1231(a)(6), without adequate procedural safeguards, would raise ‘serious constitutional concerns.’” Id. at 1086 (quoting Casas-Castrillon, 535 F.3d at 950). We thus “appl[ied] the canon . . . and construe[d] § 1231(a)(6) as requiring an individualized bond hearing, before an immigration judge, for aliens facing prolonged detention under that provision.” Id. (quoting CasasCastrillon, 535 F.3d at 951). We held further that “[s]uch aliens are entitled to release on bond unless the government establishes that the alien is a flight risk or will be a danger to the community.” Id. In justifying this application of the canon to § 1231(a)(6) to require a bond hearing, we rejected the government’s argument that § 1231(a)(6)’s text does not expressly provide for release on bond as does § 1226(a)’s text. We underscored that we had already construed § 1231(a)(6) to authorize release on bond and acknowledged that the government’s own regulations permitted release on bond for 22 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR aliens detained pursuant to the provision. Id. at 1089 (citing Diouf I, 542 F.3d at 1234; 8 C.F.R. § 241.5(b)). We also rejected the government’s argument that the regulations it modified in the wake of the Court’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) in Zadvydas provided sufficient safeguards to protect the liberty interests of § 1231(a)(6) detainees. Id. at 1089 & n.10. We found “serious constitutional concerns” with the government’s 180-day review process (i.e., detention lasting six months) because the regulations “do not provide for an in-person hearing, they place the burden on the alien rather than the government and they do not provide for a decision by a neutral arbiter such as an immigration judge.” Id. at 1091. In the context of this discussion, we explained for the first time that “[a]s a general matter, detention is prolonged when it has lasted six months and is expected to continue more than minimally beyond six months.” Id. at 1092 n.13; see also Rodriguez III, 804 F.3d at 1069 (“In Diouf II, we also adopted a definition of ‘prolonged’ detention . . . for purposes of administering the Casas[-Castrillon] bond hearing requirement.” (citing Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1092 n.13)). Alluding to Zadvydas, we explained that the “private interests at stake are profound” at six months of detention, such that “a hearing before an immigration judge is a basic safeguard for aliens facing prolonged detention under § 1231(a)(6).” Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1091–92. Third, and not long after Diouf II, we explained in Singh that “given the substantial liberty interests at stake,” 638 F.3d at 1200, due process requires the government to prove “by clear and convincing evidence that an alien is a flight risk or a danger to the community to justify the denial of bond,” id. at 1203–04. Although Singh concerned a bond hearing requirement that our court construed § 1226(a) as ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 23 requiring in Casas-Castrillon, Singh was not a statutory construction decision. Instead, we drew from the Supreme Court’s constitutional procedural due process jurisprudence “plac[ing] a heightened burden of proof on the State in civil proceedings in which the ‘individual liberty interests at stake . . . are both particularly important and more substantial than mere loss of money.’” Id. at 1204 (quoting Cooper v. Oklahoma, 517 U.S. 348, 363 (1996), and citing Foucha v. Louisiana, 504 U.S. 71, 80 (1992); Woodby v. INS, 385 U.S. 276, 285 (1966); Chaunt v. United States, 364 U.S. 350, 353 (1960)). Fourth, in Rodriguez II, we affirmed a district court’s preliminary injunction that required the government to provide individualized bond hearings before an IJ to class members detained pursuant to §§ 1225(b) and 1226(c). Rodriguez II, 715 F.3d at 1130–31. To avoid the constitutional concerns posed by prolonged detention, we held that “§ 1226(c)’s mandatory language must be construed ‘to contain an implicit ‘reasonable time’ limitation, . . . subject to federal court review.’” Id. at 1138 (quoting Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 682). After the expiration of that implicit time limitation, the government’s authority to detain class members would shift to § 1226(a). Id. (citing Casas-Castrillon, 535 F.3d at 948). Relying on Diouf II’s definition of prolonged detention, we held that “subclass members who have been detained under § 1226(c) for six months are entitled to a bond hearing[.]” Id. (citing Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1092 n.13). We acknowledged the government’s argument there that “Diouf II by its terms addressed detention under § 1231(a)(6), not § 1226(c) or § 1225(b),” but we thought the conclusion “that detention always becomes prolonged at six months” was “consistent with the reasoning of Zadvydas, Demore, Casas[-Castrillon], and Diouf II[.]” Id. at 1039. Finding “no basis” to distinguish 24 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR § 1225(b) from § 1226(c), we also held that any mandatory detention pursuant to § 1225(b) was “implicitly timelimited” to six months, after which the government’s authority shifted to § 1226(a). Id. at 1143–44. The § 1225(b) subclass would thus be entitled to a bond hearing in accordance with Casas-Castrillon’s construction of § 1226(a). Id. (citing Casas-Castrillon, 535 F.3d at 948). Singh’s strictures would apply to the §§ 1225(b) and 1226(c) subclasses. Id. at 1139, 1144. Finally, Rodriguez III—the decision at issue in Jenningslargely distilled the holdings of our decisions construing the immigration detention statutes into a single decision. There, we considered a grant of summary judgment and corresponding permanent injunction for a class of noncitizens who challenged their prolonged detention pursuant to §§ 1225(b), 1226(a), 1226(c), and 1231(a) without individualized bond hearings to justify continued detention. Rodriguez III, 804 F.3d at 1065. We reversed the judgment and injunction insofar as they concerned noncitizens detained pursuant to § 1231(a), explaining that the class was defined as non-citizens “detained ‘pending completion of removal proceedings, including judicial review.’” Id. at 1086. We explained that a removal order could not be administratively final for any class members, and thus “[s]imply put, the § 1231(a) subclass does not exist.” Id. We otherwise affirmed the judgment and injunction. In Rodriguez III, we concluded that “the canon of constitutional avoidance requires us to construe the statutory scheme to provide all class members who are in prolonged detention with bond hearings at which the government bears the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that the class member is a danger to the community or a flight ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 25 risk.” Id. at 1074. For the §§ 1225(b) and 1226(c) subclasses, we reiterated our application of the canon in Rodriguez II to construe the provisions as containing an implicit six-month time limitation, after which the government’s detention authority shifted to § 1226(a), thereby entitling detainees to a bond hearing in accordance with Casas-Castrillon. Id. at 1079−81 (discussing § 1226(c)), id. at 1081−84 (discussing § 1225(b)). We affirmed the injunction for the § 1226(a) subclass as “squarely controlled by our precedents,” pointing principally to Casas-Castrillon. Id. at 1085. Such class members were “entitled to automatic bond hearings after six months of detention.” Id. We also addressed procedural protections for the statutory bond hearings we construed § 1226(a) as requiring, and to which all class members were entitled based on our constructions of the immigration statutes at issue. Relying on Singh, we affirmed the requirement that the government justify continued detention by clear and convincing evidence. Id. at 1087. We also determined, for the first time, that “the government must provide periodic bond hearings every six months” after an initial bond hearing “so that noncitizens may challenge their continued detention as ‘the period of . . . confinement grows.’” Id. at 1089 (quoting Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1091, which in turn quoted Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 701). The government petitioned for a writ of certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted. Jennings v. Rodriguez, 136 S. Ct. 2489 (2016). C. Jennings v. Rodriguez, 138 S. Ct. 830 (2018) Our court’s constructions of §§ 1225(b), 1226(a), and 1226(c) were sharply criticized in Jennings. In the Court’s opinion, we had “adopted implausible constructions of the 26 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR three immigration provisions at issue” to hold “that detained aliens have a statutory right to periodic bond hearings under the provisions at issue.” 138 S. Ct. at 836. As the Court explained, “[t]he canon of constitutional avoidance ‘comes into play only when, after the application of ordinary textual analysis, the statute is found to be susceptible of more than one construction.’” Id. at 842 (quoting Clark, 543 U.S. at 385). The Court found no textual basis for our construction of those statutory provisions. The Court began with §§ 1225(b)(1) and (b)(2). Observing that both provisions provide that an alien “shall be detained,” id. at 837, 842, the Court explained that “[r]ead most naturally, [the statutes] mandate detention of applicants for admission until certain proceedings have concluded,” id. at 842. The Court determined that “[d]espite the clear language,” our court read an implicit six-month time limitation regarding the length of detention into them. Id. The Court rejected our reading because the provisions’ text did not “hint[] that those provisions restrict detention after six months.” Id. at 843. The Court explained that “[s]potting a constitutional issue does not give a court the authority to rewrite a statute as it pleases,” but instead “the canon permits a court to ‘choos[e] between competing plausible interpretations of a statutory text.’” Id. (quoting Clark, 543 U.S. at 381) (emphasis in original). The Court also rejected our reliance on Zadvydas “to graft a time limit onto the text of § 1225(b).” Id. The Court explained that “Zadvydas concerned § 1231(a)(6),” a different provision “authoriz[ing] the detention of aliens who have already been ordered removed from the country.” Id. The Court explained that Zadvydas construed § 1231(a)(6) to mean that an alien who is ordered removed may not be detained beyond a period reasonably necessary ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 27 to secure his removal, with six months as the presumptively reasonable period. Id. According to the Court, Zadvydas “justified this interpretation by invoking the constitutionalavoidance canon” to “detect[] ambiguity in the statutory phrase ‘may be detained.’” Id. (emphasis in original). Characterizing Zadvydas as “a notably generous application of the constitutional-avoidance canon,” the Court determined that we “went much further” in construing §§ 1225(b)(1) and (b)(2). Id. The Court explained that we “failed to address whether Zadvydas’s reasoning may fairly be applied in this case despite the many ways in which the provision in question in Zadvydas, § 1231(a)(6), differs materially from those at issue here, §§ 1225(b)(1) and (b)(2).” Id. For one, unlike § 1231(a)(6), the provisions “provide for detention for a specified period of time.” Id. at 844. Thus, detention under these statutes could not be indefinite like detention under § 1231(a)(6) could be without a limiting construction. Second, whereas § 1231(a)(6) uses the word “may,” §§ 1225(b)(1) and (b)(2) use the phrase “shall.” Id. Thus, the latter provisions are clearly mandatory, whereas § 1231(a)(6) is not. Finally, the Court found Zadvydas “particularly inapt” because Congress authorized the Attorney General to release aliens detained pursuant to §§ 1225(b)(1) and (b)(2) for urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit. Id. (citing 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A)). By “negative implication,” the Court read this to exclude any other manner of release and to “preclude[] the sort of implicit time limit on detention that we found in Zadvydas.” Id. The Court deemed § 1226(c)’s language “even clearer.” Id. at 846. The Court determined that § 1226(c) is not silent on the length of permissible detention because it mandates 28 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR detention of certain aliens pending removal proceedings. Id. The Court further determined that, pursuant to § 1226(c)’s terms, the Attorney General “may release” an alien detained pursuant to that provision “‘only if the Attorney General decides’ both that doing so is necessary for witnessprotection purposes and that the alien will not pose a danger or flight risk.” Id. (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c)(2)) (emphasis in original). Thus, the Court read this text to mean “aliens detained under its authority are not entitled to be released under any circumstances other than those expressly recognized by the statute.” Id. Turning to § 1226(a), the Court rejected our court’s imposition of “procedural protections that go well beyond the initial bond hearing established by existing regulationsnamely, periodic bond hearings every six months in which the Attorney General must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the alien’s continued detention is necessary.” Id. at 847. According to the Court, “[n]othing in § 1226(a)’s text—which says only that the Attorney General ‘may release’ the alien ‘on . . . bond’—even remotely supports the imposition of either of those requirements.” Id. 5 The Court ultimately remanded for consideration of the plaintiffs’ constitutional due process challenges to the statutes at issue. Id. at 851. 5 Jennings also rejected “layer[ing]” onto § 1226(a) a procedural requirement that would require an IJ to consider “the length of detention prior to a bond hearing . . . in determining whether the alien should be released.” 138 S. Ct. at 848. Neither Diouf II, nor the district court’s preliminary injunction require this. Thus, this aspect of Jennings is inapposite to this appeal. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 29 Jennings clearly invalidated aspects of our court’s prior constructions of §§ 1225(b), 1226(a), and 1226(c). About this, we have no doubt. See Rodriguez v. Marin, 909 F.3d 252, 255 (9th Cir. 2018) (“In Jennings[], the Supreme Court held that we misapplied the canon of constitutional avoidance to hold that certain immigration detention statutes, namely 8 U.S.C. §§ 1225(b), 1226(a), and 1226(c), implicitly contain a reasonableness determination after which due process concerns require that persons in prolonged mandatory detention are entitled to individualized bond hearings and possibly, conditional release.”). But this appeal requires us to determine the impact of Jennings on Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6), if any. II. Diouf II Is Not Clearly Irreconcilable with Jennings Implicitly acknowledging that Jennings did not concern our construction of § 1231(a)(6), the Government urges us to conclude that Jennings has invalidated Diouf II and therefore to conclude further that we are no longer bound by Diouf II. See Miller, 335 F.3d at 893. The scope of our inquiry into whether Diouf II is clearly irreconcilable with Jennings is limited. This inquiry does not call upon us to opine on whether Diouf II reached the right result, nor to determine whether we would construe § 1231(a)(6) differently. See Close v. Sotheby’s, Inc., 894 F.3d 1061, 1073–74 (9th Cir. 2018) (“[T]he fact that we might decide a case differently than a prior panel is not sufficient grounds for deeming the [prior] case overruled.”). Instead, we must determine whether the Government’s arguments satisfy the “high standard” of clear irreconcilability that governs in this circuit. Robertson, 875 F.3d at 1291. “[I]f we can apply our precedent consistently with that of the higher authority, we must do so.” FTC, 926 F.3d at 1213 (emphasis added). “Nothing 30 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR short of ‘clear irreconcilability’ will do.” Close, 894 F.3d at 1073. The Government advances three overlapping arguments to persuade us that Jennings effectively overruled Diouf II. First, the Government argues that Diouf II’s application of the canon of constitutional avoidance to § 1231(a)(6) contravenes Jennings’s mode of applying the canon to the other immigration detention statutes. Second, the Government argues that Jennings’s rejection of construing § 1226(a) to require certain procedural protections forecloses Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6). Third, the Government argues that Diouf II is no longer good law because Jennings reversed a decision of our court that applied Casas-Castrillon’s construction of § 1226(a), a decision on which Diouf II relied. We consider and ultimately reject each of the Government’s arguments. Although we recognize some tension between Diouf II and Jennings, the Government has not persuaded us that Diouf II is “so fundamentally inconsistent with” Jennings that we may overrule Diouf II now. In re Gilman, 887 F.3d at 962. Apart from rejecting the Government’s arguments, we find additional support for the conclusion that Diouf II is not clearly irreconcilable with Jennings in the Third Circuit’s decision in GuerreroSanchez v. Warden York County Prison, 905 F.3d 208 (3d Cir. 2018), which expressly adopted Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) in the wake of Jennings. A. Diouf II’s Application of the Canon of Constitutional Avoidance The Government’s core contention is that Diouf II’s application of the canon of constitutional avoidance to § 1231(a)(6) runs afoul of Jennings. We understand this ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 31 argument to concern two points specific to Diouf II’s interpretation of § 1231(a)(6). First, the Government argues that Jennings abrogated our application of the canon of constitutional avoidance to § 1231(a)(6) in Diouf II. Second, the Government contends that Jennings overrides the conclusion that § 1231(a)(6) may be construed to authorize release on bond and thus Diouf II’s application of the canon to construe § 1231(a)(6) as requiring a bond hearing cannot stand after Jennings. 6 In defense of Diouf II, Plaintiffs argue that in Jennings, the Court “explicitly reaffirmed its prior holding in Zadvydas that [§] 1231(a)(6) is amenable to the canon of constitutional avoidance.” Although we agree that Zadvydas plays an important role in our analysis given Jennings’s discussion of that decision, we do not think that the clear irreconcilability analysis here is as simple as Plaintiffs posit. The Government does not challenge whether the canon may be applied to § 1231(a)(6) at all, but rather contends that Jennings shows that Diouf II improperly applied the canon to construe § 1231(a)(6) as requiring a bond hearing. As Plaintiffs recognize, Zadvydas did not construe § 1231(a)(6) in this manner. Thus, we must consider the distinct question of whether Diouf II’s particular application of the canon runs afoul of Jennings. 6 We distinguish these arguments from the related, yet distinct issue of whether Diouf II properly construed § 1231(a)(6) to require a bond hearing after six months of detention. We consider that issue in our analysis of the Government’s argument regarding Jennings’s rejection of our court’s construction of § 1226(a) to require “periodic bond hearings” after six months of detention, beyond the bond hearing that the government’s regulations already provided at the outset of detention for an alien detained pursuant to the government’s § 1226(a) detention authority. 32 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR The Government tells us that Diouf II’s application of the canon runs afoul of Jennings because, in the Government’s view, Diouf II merely spotted a constitutional issue regarding prolonged detention that it solved by applying the canon to “insert” a bond hearing requirement into § 1231(a)(6). Pointing to the Court’s rejection in Jennings of our application of the canon to the other immigration detention statutes, the Government invites us to reject Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) as erroneously requiring “the very same relief that the Supreme Court found inconsistent with three distinct immigration statutes.” Although we acknowledge the superficial appeal of the Government’s suggestion, it carries little weight for us in our clear irreconcilability analysis. As a general matter, “we ‘must be careful not to apply the rules applicable under one statute to a different statute without careful and critical examination.’” Murray v. Mayo Clinic, 934 F.3d 1101, 1106 (9th Cir. 2019) (quoting Gross v. FBL Fin. Servs., Inc., 557 U.S. 167, 174 (2009)). That admonition carries force here. In no fewer than ten instances, the Court expressly qualified in Jennings that it rejected our application of the canon to the statutory provisions “at issue” there. Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 836, 839, 842, 843, 844, 850, 851. The Court’s repeated use of that limiting language strongly suggests that we should not read the Court’s rejection of our application of the canon to the other immigration detention statutes as alone undercutting Diouf II’s application of the canon to § 1231(a)(6). As we discuss in Part II.B.3, this conclusion is inescapable given the material textual differences between § 1231(a)(6) and the other immigration detention statutes, a point that the Court underscored throughout its analysis in Jennings. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 33 Our dissenting colleague takes issue with our observation that Jennings repeatedly qualified that its focus was on the statutory provisions at issue there, namely §§ 1225(b), 1226(a), and 1226(c). The dissent contends that Jennings’s repeated and express limitations do not deprive that decision “of all persuasive force” in the clear irreconcilability inquiry presented here. Dissent at 61 n.2. (quoting Univ. of Tex. Sw. Med. Ctr. v. Nassar, 570 U.S. 338, 351 (2013)). Drawing on the recent decision in Murray v. Mayo Clinic, 934 F.3d 1101 (9th Cir. 2019), in which a three-judge panel of our court concluded that an earlier circuit precedent was clearly irreconcilable with two intervening Supreme Court decisions, the dissent argues “that Jennings and Diouf II analyzed different statutes is not dispositive of their irreconcilability.” Dissent at 62 n.2. We do not understand this critique. 7 We have not described 7 We similarly do not understand the dissent’s reliance on Murray’s clear irreconcilability analysis. Murray addressed the continued viability of our court’s holding in Head v. Glacier Northwest, Inc, 413 F.3d 1053 (9th Cir. 2005) that Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires only a showing that disability was a motivating factor to prove a violation. The relevant statutory provision prohibited discrimination “on the basis of disability.” 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a). After Head, the Court interpreted the phrase discrimination “because of such an individual’s age” in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) to require but-for causation and rejected a motivating factor analysis. Gross v. FBL Fin. Servs., Inc., 557 U.S. 167, 177–78 (2009). The Court subsequently held that the phrase “because of” in Title VII’s anti-retaliation provision also requires but-for causation, again rejecting the motivating factor standard. Nassar, 570 U.S. at 351–53. The Murray panel determined that Head is clearly irreconcilable with Gross and Nassar’s interpretation of similar statutory text and held that Title I requires but-for causation as well. Murray, 934 F.3d at 1106 (“Under Gross, the phrase ‘on the basis of disability’ indicates but-for causation.”); id. (reasoning that Nassar, 570 U.S. at 350, explains that Gross’s holding that “because of,” “by reason of,” “on account of,” and “based on” all indicate a but-for causal relationship). Contrary to the dissent’s suggestion, this case is not 34 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR Jennings’s repeated qualifications regarding its limited focus on the statutory provisions at issue there as dispositive of the clear irreconcilability analysis. Instead, our observation leads us to reject the Government’s simplistic argument that the mere fact that Jennings invalidated our court’s application of the canon to other immigration detention statutes alone gives us license to overrule Diouf II. See Shaibi v. Berryhill, 883 F.3d 1102, 1109 (9th Cir. 2018) (amended opinion) (concluding that the Supreme Court’s “express limitation on its holding” in the intervening decision did not render the prior circuit decision clearly irreconcilable with the intervening decision). More critically, as we explain in Part II.B.3, it is the material textual differences amongst the immigration detention statutes that Jennings expressly and repeatedly recognized that give Jennings’s treatment of the other statutory provisions little weight in our clear irreconcilability analysis. Focusing squarely on Diouf II, the Government argues more narrowly that § 1231(a)(6) cannot be construed to require an individualized bond hearing because the provision does not expressly use the word “bond.” The government raised this very argument in Diouf II. 634 F.3d at 1089. But now relying on Jennings, the Government contends that Diouf II runs afoul of Jennings’s admonition that “[s]potting a constitutional issue does not give a court the authority to rewrite a statute as it pleases.” 138 S. Ct. at 843. Murray. Unlike the provisions discussed there, we are not confronted with nominal and immaterial differences between the provisions at issue in Jennings and § 1231(a)(6). In reining in our court’s reliance on Zadvydas and the canon to construe the immigration detention statutes at issue in Jennings, the Court made it eminently clear that the textual differences amongst the statutes are material. See Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 843. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 35 This argument is not without some appeal. The Government points us only to Part III of Diouf II. In a single paragraph, our court identified constitutional concerns with “prolonged detention under § 1231(a)(6), without adequate procedural protections[.]” Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1086. “To address those concerns,” we “appl[ied] the canon of constitutional avoidance and construe[d] § 1231(a)(6) as requiring an individualized bond hearing, before an immigration judge, for aliens facing prolonged detention under that provision.” Id. (citing Casas-Castrillon, 535 F.3d at 951). This portion of Diouf II contained no analysis regarding the canon’s application to § 1231(a)(6)’s text. We also recognized elsewhere in Diouf II that § 1231(a)(6) does not explicitly use the word “bond.” Id. at 1089. These aspects of Diouf II give us pause in light of Jennings, but only briefly. In Diouf II, we recognized that the canon is a tool of statutory construction that applies when an act of Congress raises a serious constitutional doubt. Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1086 n.7. And we recognized that a federal court utilizes the canon to “‘decid[e] which of two plausible statutory constructions to adopt[.]’” Id. at 1088 (quoting Clark, 543 U.S. at 380−81). Contrary to the Government’s contention that Diouf II did not grapple with § 1231(a)(6)’s text to justify its application of the canon, Diouf II did so. Section 1231(a)(6) provides that “if released” from detention beyond the removal period, an alien “shall be subject to the terms of supervision in [§ 1231(a)](3).” 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(6). In Diouf II, although we recognized that § 1231(a)(6) does not use the word “bond,” we “ha[d] no doubt that bond is also authorized under §1231(a)(6), as we have held and as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regulations acknowledge.” 634 F.3d at 1089. (citing Diouf 36 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR I, 542 F.3d at 1234; 8 C.F.R. § 241.5(b)) (emphasis added). 8 We fail to see how Jennings undercuts this articulation and application of the canon. Jennings “expressly looked” to the same underlying principles and applied the canon “consistent with th[ose] principles[.]” Lair, 697 F.3d at 1207. Jennings first affirmed that the canon applies “[w]hen ‘a serious doubt’ is raised about the constitutionality of an act of Congress,” pursuant to which “‘. . . this Court will first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the question may be avoided.’” Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 842 (quoting Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 62 (1932)). Jennings then reiterated that “the canon permits a court ‘to choos[e] between competing plausible interpretations of a statutory text.’” Id. at 843 (quoting Clark, 543 U.S. at 381) (emphasis in original omitted). Jennings reiterated what the Court had already said about the canon in several cases decided long before our Diouf II decision. See United States v. Locke, 471 U.S. 84, 96 (1985) (“We cannot press statutory construction ‘to the point of disingenuous evasion’ even to avoid a constitutional question.”) (quoting George Moore Ice Cream Co. v. Rose, 289 U.S. 373, 379 (1933)); see also Clark, 543 U.S. at 381, 385; United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Co-op., 532 U.S. 483, 494 (2001). The Government and the dissent conspicuously ignore that Diouf II articulated and relied on the same principles governing application of the canon as Jennings. We have 8 8 C.F.R. § 241.5 is a regulation that applies to aliens who the government releases from § 1231(a)(6) detention. The regulation provides that an officer may require the posting of a bond to ensure an alien complies with the conditions of a supervision order. Id. As Plaintiffs acknowledge, this regulation remains in effect. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 37 explained, however, that when an intervening decision from a higher authority does not “change the state of the law,” but instead “clarifie[s] and reinforce[s]” law that existed at the time of the prior circuit decision, it is unlikely to satisfy the Miller standard. Lair, 697 F.3d at 1207; see also Nat’l Fed’n of the Blind v. United Airlines, Inc., 813 F.3d 718, 728 (9th Cir. 2016) (reasoning in part that a prior circuit decision was “not so ‘clearly irreconcilable’” with an intervening Supreme Court decision because the intervening decision did not “represent a significant shift” in the relevant jurisprudence). The dissent identifies nothing new in Jennings regarding the canon’s application that Diouf II failed to articulate in applying the canon. 9 As our analysis shows, Jennings did not do so but rather engaged in statutory-specific applications of the canon. We thus reject the argument that Diouf II’s application of the canon to § 1231(a)(6) is clearly irreconcilable with Jennings’s mode of applying the canon. 10 9 Our court did not decide Diouf II in a statutory vacuum. Rather, that decision’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) followed Zadvydas, which identified ambiguity in § 1231(a)(6)’s text regarding the government’s authority to detain an alien, and two earlier circuit precedents which construed § 1231(a)(6) to authorize release on bond. Diouf I, 542 F.3d at 1234; Doan v. I.N.S., 311 F.3d 1160 (9th Cir. 2002). Diouf II relied on these decisions to apply the canon. See Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1087– 88, 1091–92 & nn.10–13 (referring to Zadvydas on multiple occasions in the context of applying the canon); id. at 1089 (referring to Diouf I, which in turn relied on Doan). 10 For the first time, in its reply brief, the Government argues that Jennings established a framework that “obligated” the district court to look first to “Zadvydas’s construction of § 1231(a)” and then to consider Diouf II’s application of the canon of constitutional avoidance to determine whether Diouf II comported with Zadvydas. We do not normally consider arguments raised for the first time in a reply brief. See 38 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR We also reject the Government’s contention that Jennings overrides our court’s conclusion that § 1231(a)(6) authorizes release on bond—a conclusion central to Diouf II’s application of the canon to the statute. Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) to require a bond hearing plainly followed from two of our decisions that construed the statute to encompass bond as a condition of release from detention that the statute authorizes. We first construed § 1231(a)(6) to allow an alien’s release on bond in Doan v. I.N.S., 311 F.3d 1160 (9th Cir. 2002), a case we decided shortly after Zadvydas. There, we observed that §§ 1231(a)(3) and 1231(a)(6) authorize an alien’s release from detention on terms of supervision. We determined that “a bond is well within the kinds of conditions contemplated by the Supreme Court in Zadvydas, where the Court observed that 8 C.F.R. § 241.5 establishes conditions of release.” Id. at 1161 (citing Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 688–89, 695–96). Pursuant to that regulation, the government had required an alien to post bond as a condition of release. Id. Thus, we rejected the alien’s “contention that because a bond is not expressly listed as a condition in the statute, imposition of any bond as a condition of release is unlawful.” Id. at 1162. Building on Doan, in Diouf I, we rejected the government’s argument that “Diouf was statutorily ineligible for release on bond” as an alien detained pursuant to § 1231(a)(6) because “[w]e have specifically construed § 1231(a)(6) to permit release on Padgett v. Wright, 587 F.3d 983, 985 n.2 (9th Cir. 2009). Nevertheless, even considering the argument, we readily reject it for the simple reason that the Government reads into Jennings a “framework” that the Court neither articulated, nor even hinted at. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 39 bond.” Diouf I, 542 F.3d at 1234 (citing Doan, 311 F.3d at 1160). Relying on these earlier precedents, Diouf II applied the canon of constitutional avoidance to construe § 1231(a)(6) not only as authorizing release on bond, but as requiring a bond hearing in light of the constitutional issue of prolonged detention. The Government does not acknowledge our decisions construing § 1231(a)(6)’s allowance for release to encompass release on bond, nor does the Government acknowledge Diouf II’s reliance on them. Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1089 (citing Diouf I, 542 F.3d at 1234; 8 C.F.R. § 241.5(b)). Were we to accept the Government’s argument that § 1231(a)(6) does not even authorize release on bond, we would have to abrogate not only Diouf II, but also Doan and Diouf I, on which Diouf II’s analysis of § 1231(a)(6) rested. 11 But neither Doan nor Diouf I relied on the canon to construe § 1231(a)(6), and thus Jennings does not undercut either of them. We otherwise see nothing in either decision that is clearly irreconcilable with Jennings and therefore we are not free to overrule them. Miller, 335 F.3d 11 The dissent sees “no ineluctable reason” why we would need to overrule these precedents to accept the Government’s argument, Dissent at 65 n.12, and explains them away as merely concerned with the government’s authority to release an alien on bond to arrive at the conclusion that Diouf II failed to identify a plausible basis in § 1231(a)(6)’s text for a bond hearing requirement, id. at 63–66. We do not understand this reasoning. Whether a statute authorizes release on bond is the necessary predicate to whether that statute can be construed to require such release pursuant to a bond hearing. Ignoring these commonsense propositions, the dissent elides Diouf II’s application of the canon to construe § 1231(a)(6) not only to provide for a bond hearing, but as requiring a bond hearing after six months of detention to avoid the constitutional problem of prolonged detention. 40 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR at 893. Because Jennings does not affect these decisions, we reject the Government’s first set of arguments. B. Jennings’s Rejection of Construing § 1226(a) to Require Certain Procedural Protections Does Not Undercut Diouf II Jennings rejected, in relevant part, the addition of two procedural protections onto § 1226(a): (1) “periodic bond hearings every six months,” (2) “in which the Attorney General must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the alien’s continued detention is necessary[.]” Id. at 847– 48. The Government contends that § 1231(a)(6)’s “operative language directly mirrors” § 1226(a) because both provisions provide that the government may detain an alien, and thus Jennings forecloses construing § 1231(a)(6) to require these protections as well. More sweepingly, the Government suggests that Jennings rejected construing § 1226(a) to require a bond hearing at all, thereby also undercutting Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) to require a bond hearing. We dispose readily of two of the Government’s arguments, and then turn to the issue of “periodic bond hearings.”
Constitutional Due Process Burden of Proof Holding We reject first the Government’s reliance on Jennings’s rejection of construing § 1226(a) to require the government to justify an alien’s continued detention by clear and convincing evidence. Although Jennings undoubtedly rejected construing the statute to require such a burden, that rejection is inapposite here. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 41 Contrary to the Government’s suggestion, Diouf II did not construe § 1231(a)(6) to impose such a burden, nor did we premise our determination that the government must meet such a burden on construing any of the immigration detention statutes. In Singh, we explained that, “[n]either Casas-Castrillon, nor any other Ninth Circuit, statutory or regulatory authority specifies the appropriate standard of proof at a Casas[-Castrillon] bond hearing.” 638 F.3d at 1203 (emphasis added). Rather than construe any statute, we determined that constitutional procedural due process required the government to meet the clear and convincing burden of proof standard. Singh, 638 F.3d at 1203–04; see also Kashem v. Barr, 941 F.3d 358, 380 (9th Cir. 2019) (acknowledging Singh’s clear and convincing evidence burden as a procedural due process standard “which applies in a range of civil proceedings involving substantial deprivations of liberty.”). Rodriguez III, in turn, relied on Singh to affirm a clear and convincing burden of proof for bond hearings held pursuant to our constructions of the immigration detention statutes. Rodriguez III, 804 F.3d at 1087. Thus, Jennings’s rejection of layering such a burden onto § 1226(a) as a matter of statutory construction cannot undercut Diouf II, nor undercut our constitutional due process holding in Singh.
Authorize a Bond Hearing Second, we reject the Government’s reading of Jennings as foreclosing construction of § 1226(a) to authorize a bond hearing at all. Rather than focus on the Court’s § 1226(a) analysis, the Government misdirects us to the Court’s observation that “neither §1225(b)(1) nor §1225(b)(2) says anything whatsoever about bond hearings.” Jennings, 42 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 138 S. Ct. at 842. The Court, however said no such thing about § 1226(a). Section 1226(a) provides that the Attorney General “may release” an alien detained pursuant to that provision “on bond” or “on conditional parole.” 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a)(2)(A), (B). The Court expressly acknowledged that “[f]ederal regulations provide that aliens detained under § 1226(a) receive bond hearings at the outset of detention.” Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 847 (citing 8 C.F.R. §§ 236.1(d)(1), 1236.1(d)(1)). Section 1226(a) does not use the word “hearing.” The Court, however, did not suggest that the regulations’ provision of those bond hearings was somehow at odds with the government’s § 1226(a) detention authority pursuant to the statutory text. 12 Instead, the Court took issue with our court’s imposition of “procedural protections that go well beyond the initial bond hearing established by existing regulations” for aliens detained pursuant to § 1226(a). Id. (emphasis added). The Court’s rejection of our court’s imposition of a six-month bond hearing requirement for aliens detained pursuant to § 1226(a) beyond the regulations’ provision of a single bond hearing at the outset of detention is not the same as rejecting a construction of § 1226(a) to authorize or require bond hearings at all. Thus, we cannot agree with one of the 12 Like the Government, the dissent focuses on the absence of the word “hearing” in § 1231(a)(6). Dissent at 65. In doing so, the dissent ignores the absence of that word in § 1226(a), and Jennings’s analysis regarding that provision. Tellingly, there is nothing in Jennings that rejects reading § 1226(a) to require a bond hearing at all, as opposed to our erroneous reading of that provision to require a bond hearing at a particular point in time. As we explain in Part II.B.3, Jennings’s rejection of our court’s bond hearing requirement for § 1226(a) cannot be fairly applied to Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) in light of Zadvydas. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 43 fundamental premises underlying the Government’s challenge to Diouf II based on the Court’s treatment of § 1226(a) in Jennings.
Hearing Requirement for Aliens Detained Pursuant to § 1226(a) Does Not Undercut Diouf II’s Construction of § 1231(a)(6) The merits of the Government’s clear irreconcilability challenge to Diouf II’s bond hearing requirement ultimately come down to Jennings’s rejection of construing § 1226(a) to contain a periodic bond hearing requirement. Reviewing the Court’s actual reasoning in Jennings, including with respect to all the provisions at issue there, we cannot agree that Jennings’s treatment of § 1226(a) on this issue undercuts Diouf II. In the decision that Jennings reversed, we used the phrase “periodic bond hearing” to refer to bond hearings every six months. Rodriguez III, 804 F.3d at 1089. The Court used the phrase “periodic bond hearing” to encompass a bond hearing held initially at six months of detention. Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 850–51 (“The Court of Appeals held that aliens detained under the provisions at issue must be given periodic bond hearings, and the dissent agrees. . . . But the dissent draws that 6-month limitation out of thin air. . . [N]othing in any of the relevant provisions imposes a 6- month time limit on detention without the possibility of bail.”). Even if we apply the Court’s definition, we fail to see how Jennings undercuts Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) to require a bond hearing after the government detains an alien pursuant to this statutory provision for six months and whose release or removal is not imminent. 44 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR Similar to our observation in the discussion of the Government’s constitutional avoidance argument, we observe here that Jennings repeatedly qualified that its rejection of a “periodic bond hearing” requirement applied to the statutory provisions at issue there. Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 836 (“All parties appear to agree that the text of [§§ 1225(b), 1226(a), 1226(c)], when read most naturally, does not give detained aliens the right to periodic bond hearings during the course of their detention.”); id. (“[T]he Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that detained aliens have a statutory right to periodic bond hearings under the provisions at issue.” (emphasis added)); id. at 844 (“[A] series of textual signals distinguishes the provisions at issue in this case from Zadvydas’s interpretation of § 1231(a)(6).” (emphasis added)); id. at 850–51 (“The Court of Appeals held that aliens detained under the provisions at issue must be given periodic bond hearings, and the dissent agrees. . . . But the dissent draws that 6-month limitation out of thin air. However broad its interpretation of the words ‘detain’ and ‘custody,’ nothing in any of the relevant provisions imposes a 6-month time limit on detention without the possibility of bail.” (emphasis added)); id. at 851 (“Because the Court of Appeals erroneously concluded that periodic bond hearings are required under the immigration provisions at issue here . . .” (emphasis added)). The Court’s repeated use of this language strongly suggests that we should not read the Court’s rejection of a six-month bond hearing requirement for § 1226(a) as undercutting Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) to require a bond hearing after six months of detention when an alien’s release or removal is not imminent. We find that conclusion inescapable when we look at Jennings’s careful focus on the text of the provisions at issue there and the ways in which they differ from § 1231(a)(6) ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 45 and thus whether Zadvydas’s reasoning could apply to the other provisions at all. In rejecting our constructions of §§ 1225(b)(1) and (b)(2) to contain an implicit six-month time limit, the Court underscored that Zadvydas applied the canon to § 1231(a)(6) based on ambiguity in the provision’s “may be detained” language and because the provision contained no limitation on the permissible length of detention. Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 843 (noting that in contrast to §§ 1225(b)(1) and (b)(2), “Congress left the permissible length of detention under §1231(a)(6) unclear.”); Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 697. Rather than allow the government to subject an alien to potentially indefinite detention, as Jennings explained, Zadvydas construed § 1231(a)(6) to hold that “an alien who has been ordered removed may not be detained beyond ‘a period reasonably necessary to secure removal’” with “six months a[s] a presumptively reasonable period.” Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 843 (quoting Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 699 and citing Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 701). As the Court explained, detention pursuant to §§ 1225(b)(1) or (b)(2) presented no such issue based on the clear text of those provisions. Id. at 843–44. The Court’s analysis of § 1226(a) in Jennings was sparse. But the Court’s reasoning in its discussion of §§ 1225(b)(1) and (b)(2) applies to § 1226(a) as well. Contrary to the Government’s singular focus on §§ 1226(a) and 1231(a)(6)’s use of the “may be detained” language, the provisions are materially distinct in the meaning of this language. Unlike § 1231(a)(6), “§ 1226(a) authorizes the Attorney General to arrest and detain an alien ‘pending a decision on whether the alien is to be removed from the United States.’” Id. at 847 (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a)). Thus, as a textual matter, discretionary detention pursuant to § 1226(a) has an end point, unlike discretionary detention pursuant to § 1231(a)(6) absent a limiting construction. 46 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR Pursuant to the Court’s own reasoning elsewhere in Jennings, the six-month presumptive time limitation that Zadvydas read into § 1231(a)(6) to address potentially indefinite detention pursuant to that provision does not “fairly apply” to detention pursuant to § 1226(a). This material difference between §§ 1226(a) and 1231(a)(6) prevents us from concluding that Jennings’s rejection of construing § 1226(a) to require a bond hearing at six months applies to § 1231(a)(6). 13 Unlike with any of the other immigration detention statutes at issue in Jennings, Diouf II concerned the statutory provision at issue in Zadvydas and adopted a definition of prolonged detention that coincides with the presumptive six-month time limit that Zadvydas read into that provision based on § 1231(a)(6)’s textual ambiguity. Compare Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 701 with Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1091–92 & n.13. Further echoing 13 The dissent’s analysis proceeds on the mistaken assumption that there are no material differences between §§ 1226(a) and 1231(a)(6). Dissent at 61–62 n.2. In doing so, the dissent does not engage with Jennings’s reasoning and analysis regarding the statutory provisions at issue there. Moreover, the dissent commits the converse of the error that led the Court to reject our application of the canon to the other immigration detention statutes. Dissent at 67 (contending that Jennings rejected the “scaffolding upon which we had erected” additional procedural protections for § 1226(a) detainees.). Whereas as we had ignored the textual differences amongst the immigration detention statutes to apply the canon to those statutes in the wake of the Court’s application of the canon to § 1231(a)(6) in Zadvydas, the dissent uncritically applies Jennings’s limited analysis concerning § 1226(a) to Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) despite the ways in which Jennings’s reasoning shows that these provisions are materially distinct. Jennings’s actual analysis prevents us from finding clearly irreconcilability here. Cf. Murray, 934 F.3d at 1106 n.6 (finding clear irreconcilability when there were “no meaningful textual difference[s]” in the statutory text at issue there and the different provisions considered by two intervening decisions). ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 47 Zadvydas, Diouf II also qualified that its construction of § 1231(a)(6) to require a bond hearing does not apply if an alien’s release or removal is imminent. Compare Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 701 (“[A]n alien may be held in confinement until it has been determined that there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future.”) with Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1092 n.13. Although Jennings rejected our court’s reliance on Zadvydas to construe the other immigration detention statutes and rejected construing § 1226(a) to require a sixmonth bond hearing, we cannot find in Jennings’s reasoning a rationale that clearly undercuts Diouf II’s six-month bond hearing requirement for aliens detained pursuant to § 1231(a)(6). Contrary to the dissent’s view, Jennings shows that Zadvydas’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) provides an “arguable statutory foundation,” 138 S. Ct. at 842, for Diouf II’s six-month bond hearing requirement that is entirely absent from the other immigration detention provisions. 14 14 The dissent posits that “we have given short shrift to” the motivations underlying the Court’s decision in Zadvydas, specifically that the decision “was largely motivated by the fact that the possibility of removal of the aliens before it was truly remote because the countries to which they could be removed were highly unlikely to accept them at any time in the foreseeable future.” Dissent at 63 n.4. That is incorrect. As the Court has instructed, Zadvydas’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) applies to all aliens detained pursuant to § 1231(a)(6) even if “the constitutional concerns that influenced our statutory construction in Zadvydas are not present for aliens” in other circumstances. Clark, 543 U.S. at 380. And the Court has rejected the notion that statutory ambiguity disappears based on the circumstances of a given alien detained pursuant to § 1231(a)(6). “Be that as it may, it cannot justify giving the same detention provision a different meaning when such aliens are involved. It is not at all unusual to give a statute’s ambiguous 48 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR In its reply brief, the Government makes much of that fact that Jennings called into question Zadvydas’s reading of § 1231(a)(6) as a “notably generous application of the canon.” 138 S. Ct. at 843. But the Court did not overrule Zadvydas; its statutory analysis, including application of the canon, remain intact. 15 We therefore cannot conclude that Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) to require a bond hearing after six months of detention runs afoul of Jennings. We understand that the Government strenuously disagrees with Diouf II’s bond hearing requirement as inconsistent with the habeas framework that Zadvydas outlined and with the Government’s post-Zadvydas regulations. That disagreement, however, has nothing to do with whether Jennings, by its own terms, undercuts Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6). Accordingly, we reject the Government’s second argument. 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.” Id. (emphasis in original). 15 In failing to account for Jennings’s reasoning regarding Zadvydas and Diouf II’s reliance on Zadvydas’s reading of § 1231(a)(6), the dissent characterizes the textual ambiguity in § 1231(a)(6) that Zadvydas identified as a “narrow ambiguity.” Dissent at 63–64. We know of no basis in our clear irreconcilability jurisprudence that would allow us to overrule the prior decision of a three-judge panel on the basis of a reason that appears nowhere in the intervening authority’s decision. Neither Jennings, nor Zadvydas said anything about the scope of the ambiguity in § 1231(a)(6) that Zadvydas identified. Contrary to the dissent’s view, Jennings’s questioning of Zadvydas’s particular application of the canon to that ambiguity—the adoption of a six-month time limitation that Jennings rejected as a matter of statutory construction for the other immigration detention statutes—says nothing about the ambiguity’s scope. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 49 C. Diouf II’s Reliance on Casas-Castrillon As a final matter, the Government contends that Diouf II is clearly irreconcilable with Jennings based on the interrelated nature of our decisions in Casas-Castrillon, Diouf II, and Rodriguez III. The Government’s argument is as follows: (1) Diouf II extended Casas-Castrillon’s construction of § 1226(a) to individuals subject to prolonged detention pursuant to § 1231(a)(6), (2) Rodriguez III also applied Casas-Castrillon’s construction of § 1226(a), (3) Jennings reversed Rodriguez III, and, thus, by implication, (4) Jennings and Diouf II are clearly irreconcilable. We reject these arguments for two reasons. First, we think that the Government misreads both Casas-Castrillon and Jennings. As we have explained, Jennings did not invalidate construing § 1226(a) to authorize a bond hearing at all, but rather rejected construing § 1226(a) to require a bond hearing at six months in addition to the government’s existing bond hearing regulations. More importantly here, Casas-Castrillon did not construe § 1226(a) in the manner that the Court rejected in Jennings. Casas-Castrillon applied the canon of constitutional avoidance to construe § 1226(a)’s authorization for release of an alien on bond as requiring an individualized bond hearing when an alien is subject to prolonged detention. 535 F.3d at 951. By the time our court decided Rodriguez III, we had applied Diouf II’s definition of prolonged detention as detention lasting longer than six months to § 1226(a), which transformed Casas-Castrillon’s bond hearing requirement into a six-month bond hearing requirement. See Rodriguez II, 715 F.3d at 1139 (“Diouf II strongly suggested that immigration detention becomes prolonged at the six-month mark regardless of the authorizing statute. . . . Even if Diouf II does not squarely 50 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR hold that detention always becomes prolonged at six months, that conclusion is consistent with the reasoning of Zadvydas, Demore, Casas[-Castrillon], and Diouf II, and we so hold.”); see also Rodriguez III, 804 F.3d at 1078 & n.7. By its terms, Jennings invalidates that aspect of our case law construing § 1226(a), but does not go further. 16 Second, even if we concluded here that Jennings overruled Casas-Castrillon, we do not see how that could undercut Diouf II entirely. Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) did not rest solely on its purported extension of Casas-Castrillon to aliens detained pursuant to § 1231(a)(6). Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1086. As we have explained, Diouf II considered a number of arguments particular to § 1231(a)(6) itself that could not have applied to Casas-Castrillon’s analysis of § 1226(a). Id. at 1086–92. More critically, as Jennings’s reasoning makes clear, Casas-Castrillon concerned a statutory provision that is materially different from the provision at issue in Diouf II. Thus, we conclude that Diouf II can stand irrespective of its reliance on Casas- 16 The dissent contends that in rejecting the Government’s challenge to Diouf II based on its argument here, we have suggested that “some of Casas-Castrillon survives Jennings[.]” Dissent at 68 n.14. Our response is twofold. For one, we have done nothing more than explain why we think the Government’s challenge to Diouf II based on Jennings is wrong. We have not decided what specifically remains of CasasCastrillon’s statutory holding after Jennings. Second, we do not take issue with the dissent’s correct understanding that Jennings invalidated procedural protections that go beyond what the government’s regulations provide. Id. However, we otherwise part ways with the dissent’s reading of Jennings. As we have explained, Jennings’s approval of the government’s regulations to provide bond hearings for aliens detained pursuant to § 1226(a) necessarily assumes that § 1226(a) can be plausibly read to authorize such hearings in the first place. ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 51 Castrillon.17 Because we reject this final argument, we conclude that the Government has not shown that Diouf II is clearly irreconcilable with Jennings. D. Additional Support for Diouf II After Jennings Apart from rejecting the Government’s arguments, we find additional support for our conclusion that Diouf II is not clearly irreconcilable with Jennings based on the Third Circuit’s decision in Guerrero-Sanchez v. Warden York County Prison, 905 F.3d 208 (3d Cir. 2018). In Guerrero-Sanchez, the Third Circuit considered whether the government could subject the alien petitioner in that case to prolonged detention without providing an individualized bond hearing. The Third Circuit first determined that the alien—who had a reinstated removal order and was detained pending his pursuit of withholdingonly relief from removal—was subject to detention pursuant to § 1231(a)(6). 18 Id. at 213–19. Having located the 17 The dissent’s reliance on Nunez-Reyes v. Holder, 646 F.3d 684, 690 (9th Cir. 2011) (en banc) misses the mark. For one, Nunez-Reyes involved our court sitting en banc, not a three-judge panel determining whether an earlier circuit precedent was clearly irreconcilable with the decision of an intervening authority. We are faced with different constraints compared with our court sitting en banc. Second, unlike in Nunez-Reyes, there is no single “rule” on which Diouf II relied that would warrant a conclusion that Jennings’s rejection of any aspect of Casas-Castrillon necessarily would invalidate Diouf II in its entirety. 18 We recognize that there is a circuit split on the issue of whether an alien subject to a reinstated removal order who pursues withholdingonly relief is subject to detention pursuant to § 1226(a) or § 1231(a)(6). Both our court and the Third Circuit treat such detention as authorized pursuant to § 1231(a)(6). Guerrero-Sanchez, 905 F.3d at 213–19; Padilla-Ramirez, 882 F.3d at 830–32. In contrast, the Second and Fourth 52 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR government’s detention authority in § 1231(a)(6), the Third Circuit considered whether the petitioner was entitled to a bond hearing at all. Id. at 219. To resolve that issue, the Third Circuit considered, in relevant part, Zadvydas, Jennings, and Diouf II. Rejecting the government’s argument there that “Zadvydas resolves the only ambiguity in the text of § 1231(a)(6),” id. at 220, the Third Circuit reasoned that Zadvydas did “not explicitly preclude courts from construing § 1231(a)(6) to include additional procedural protections during the statutorily authorized detention period, should those protections be necessary to avoid detention that could raise different constitutional concerns,” id. at 221 (emphasis in original). Finding that the petitioner’s 637-day detention without bond raised serious constitutional concerns, id., the Third Circuit declined to address whether the petitioner’s continued confinement violated the Due Process Clause. Id. at 221, 223. Instead, the court asked whether the canon of constitutional avoidance might sustain a reading of § 1231(a)(6) that would require the provision of a bond hearing. Id. at 223. The Third Circuit acknowledged Jennings’s discussion regarding the proper invocation of the canon and Jennings’s holding that the canon could not be applied to “other provisions in the INA” that use the phrase “shall detain.” Id. (“We . . . invoke the canon of constitutional avoidance so long as ‘the statute is found to be susceptible of more than one construction.’ (quoting Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 842)). Turning to § 1231(a)(6)’s text and alluding to Zadvydas, the Circuits treat such detention as authorized pursuant to § 1226(a). Guzman Chavez v. Hott, 940 F.3d 867, 880−82 (4th Cir. 2019); Guerra v. Shanahan, 831 F.3d 59, 64 (2d Cir. 2016). ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 53 Third Circuit noted that the statute’s use of the phrase “may be detained” “invites us to apply the canon of constitutional avoidance[.]” Id. at 223–24. “In order to avoid determining whether the petitioner’s detention violates the Due Process Clause,” the Third Circuit expressly “adopt[ed] the Ninth Circuit’s limiting construction of § 1231(a)(6) that ‘an alien facing prolonged detention under [that provision] is entitled to a bond hearing before an immigration judge and is entitled to be released from detention unless the government establishes that the alien poses a risk of flight or a danger to the community.’” Id. at 224 (quoting Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1092). The Third Circuit also adopted our clear and convincing evidence standard set forth in Singh. Id. at n.12 (“The Government must meet its burden in such bond hearings by clear and convincing evidence. (citing Singh, 638 F.3d at 1203–04)). The Third Circuit’s express and reasoned adoption of Diouf II even after Jennings shows that we do not break new ground in concluding that Diouf II is not clearly irreconcilable with Jennings. Ignoring Guerrero-Sanchez, the Government quotes from the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Hamama v. Homan, 912 F.3d 869 (6th Cir. 2018), without any argument about how that case should affect our clear irreconcilability analysis here. To the extent the Government intended to argue that Hamama should change our analysis, we reject that argument. In Hamama, the Sixth Circuit vacated a district court’s class-wide preliminary injunction concerning §§ 1226(c) and 1231(a)(6) detention claims, pursuant to which the government was required to provide class members with individualized bond hearings. Id. at 873–74. With respect to those claims, the Sixth Circuit determined that 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1), a statute that prohibits federal courts other than 54 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR the Supreme Court from enjoining the operation of §§ 1221– 31 except with respect to an individual alien, barred jurisdiction over class-wide injunctive relief there. Id. at 877. In rejecting the petitioners’ argument that they sought injunctive relief pursuant to a statutory construction of the relevant detention statutes, the Sixth Circuit determined that “Jennings foreclosed any statutory interpretation that would lead to what Petitioners want.” Id. at 879. In the Sixth Circuit’s view, “the district court . . . created out of thin air a requirement for bond hearings that does not exist in the statute; and adopted new standards that the government must meet at the bond hearings.” Id. at 879–80. Hamama does not compel a different conclusion about whether Diouf II is clearly irreconcilable with Jennings for two reasons. First, despite remarking that “the Jennings Court chastised the Ninth Circuit for ‘erroneously conclud[ing] that periodic bond hearings are required under the immigration provisions at issue here,” the Sixth Circuit extended Jennings to § 1231 without any analysis regarding whether Jennings’s reasoning fairly applies to that provision. Id. at 879 (quoting Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 850) (emphasis added). Although we do not question Hamama’s determination insofar as it concerns the provisions actually at issue in Jennings, we cannot agree with the uncritical extension of Jennings to § 1231(a)(6), particularly given our foregoing analysis of Jennings. Second, unlike GuerreroSanchez, Hamama neither acknowledged, nor grappled with our decision in Diouf II. Therefore, we do not find Hamama to have any persuasive value here in determining whether we remain bound by Diouf II even after Jennings. The dissent takes issue with our reliance on GuerreroSanchez. Dissent at 63–64 & n.5. Yet, in so doing, the dissent errs by mistaking the clear irreconcilability inquiry ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR 55 that confronts us with an invitation to opine on how we would decide the statutory construction question that Diouf II resolved. 19 To be clear, our reliance on Guerrero-Sanchez concerns whether we may apply Diouf II even after Jennings. In determining whether a prior circuit precedent is clearly irreconcilable with an intervening authority’s decision, we have looked to how other circuits have addressed the issue in light of the intervening decision. See Murray, 934 F.3d at 1107 (observing that the court’s clear irreconcilability conclusion “comport[ed] with the decisions of all of our sister circuits that have considered this question after” the Supreme Court’s Gross and Nassar decisions); In re Zappos.com, Inc., 888 F.3d 1020, 1026 n.6 (9th Cir. 2018) (noting that the panel’s conclusion that earlier circuit precedent was not clearly irreconcilable with an intervening Supreme Court decision was “consistent” with sister circuit decisions to have considered the issue). Guerrero-Sanchez is the only reasoned decision of another circuit addressing the relationship between Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) and Jennings, and it determined that Jennings does not undercut Diouf II’s construction. We therefore respectfully disagree with the dissent. 19 The dissent asserts that we and Guerrero-Sanchez “mistakenly perceive[] the narrow ambiguity in § 1231(a)(6) identified by Zadvydas” to justify Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6). Dissent 63–64. We have already explained that the dissent’s characterization of the ambiguity that Zadvydas identified is not justified by Jennings or Zadvydas. We otherwise note that the dissent’s view contravenes how at least one other circuit understood Zadvydas prior to Jennings. See Hernandez-Carrera v. Carlson, 547 F.3d 1237, 1249 (10th Cir. 2008) (“In Zadvydas, the Supreme Court did not purport to ‘resolve’ the statutory ambiguity in § 1231(a)(6) once and for all. . . . In no way, . . . did the Court signal that its interpretation was the only reasonable construction of § 1231(a)(6).”). 56 ALEMAN GONZALEZ V. BARR E. The Outcome of the Clearly Irreconcilable