Opinion ID: 3026255
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether Judicial Review is Available to

Text: Kolkevich
The Government’s argument is simple. Having failed to file a habeas corpus petition before RIDA, Kolkevich was required to file a petition for review in our Court within 30 days of his final order of removal. He did not do so. Moreover, after RIDA took effect on May 11, 2005, Kolkevich was no longer permitted to file a § 2241 habeas petition. In the Government’s view, had Kolkevich acted more quickly and filed a habeas petition before RIDA became law, or had he filed a motion to reconsider with the BIA, he would have had an opportunity to challenge his final order of removal. However, because he took neither of these opportunities, because he failed to file a petition for review within 30 days of receiving his final order of removal, and because he filed a habeas petition after such petitions were disallowed by RIDA, Kolkevich’s appeal is misplaced, not timely, and this Court is without jurisdiction to entertain it. Kolkevich argues that, were we to accept the Government’s view, he would be left without any opportunity for judicial review. In Kolkevich’s view, he was unable to file a petition for review within 30 days of receiving his final order of removal because, during that 30-day period, RIDA was not yet in effect and, therefore, the previous regime, under which 17 criminal aliens had an unfettered right to file for habeas relief, still governed. When the final order of removal was issued, that right still existed and continued to exist until it was taken away, without replacement, in RIDA. In short, Kolkevich argues that the Government’s interpretation of RIDA strips him of any access to the courts and, therefore, constitutes an unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. So that we may avoid finding RIDA unconstitutional, we should, in Kolkevich’s view, construe the statute in a way that would permit us to exercise jurisdiction over his appeal. We are one of very few Courts to have been presented with these arguments.
The dearth of case law on this topic is due, undoubtedly, to the fact that these issues are pertinent only to a very narrow class of aliens. First, only criminal aliens are affected, since it is only that type of alien that had access to habeas review prior to RIDA’s enactment. Second, the pool is further reduced to those criminal aliens who, at the time RIDA became effective, had not yet filed their habeas petitions. Nevertheless, some cases have emerged. The first case is one recently decided by the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, Fontes v. Gonzales (“Fontes I”), 483 F.3d 115 (1st Cir. 2007). The procedural and factual history 18 of that case is a tortured one that we need not recount in detail. Suffice it to say that Fontes, also a criminal alien, received his final order of removal on September 30, 2004. He took no immediate action. Then, on May 20, 2005, nine days following the enactment of RIDA, Fontes filed a petition for review. As it has done here, the Government argued that Fontes’s petition was time-barred because it was filed more than 30 days after the final order. However, Fontes initially did not raise a Suspension Clause argument, but, instead, argued that the Court should fashion a post-RIDA 30-day “grace period” in which he could bring his claim. The Court ruled that such a grace period was unwarranted and that, therefore, Fontes’s appeal was untimely. Although we will discuss the “grace period” issue at greater length below, we note now that the question of how much time an alien in Fontes’s or Kolkevich’s position should receive if permitted to file is distinct from the threshold question of whether a criminal alien with a pre-RIDA order of removal should be permitted to file in the first place. Fontes does not discuss the latter question. Fontes next filed a petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc and, in that petition, raised for the first time the same Suspension Clause argument that Kolkevich raises here. Although the Court of Appeals declined to grant rehearing, relying on the fact that, jurisdiction aside, the Court did not see the substance of Fontes’s appeal as meritorious, it recognized that “the Suspension Clause issue is not only of constitutional dimension but also is colorable,” and made clear 19 that its decision should not be read to preclude full consideration of such an argument should it be raised and fully briefed in the future. Fontes v. Gonzales (“Fontes II”), No. 05-1755, 2007 WL 2306977, at -2 (1st Cir. Aug. 14, 2007). In the second case, Chen v. Gonzales, 435 F.3d 788 (7th Cir. 2006), the alien received her final order of removal on April 25, 2005 and filed a habeas petition on June 29, 2005, with RIDA intervening as of May 11, 2005. The Court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over Chen’s appeal, essentially adopting the position advanced by the Government in this case: that Chen’s appeal was not timely because it was not filed within 30 days of the final order of removal. Chen fails to deal with the constitutional issues raised by this particular fact pattern however, and, for that reason, it is unenlightening.3 Finally, the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas dealt with similar facts in Okeezie v. Chertoff (“Okeezie I”), 430 F. Supp. 2d 665 (W.D. Tex. 2006), and again on reconsideration in Okeezie v. Chertoff (“Okeezie II”), 462 F. Supp. 2d 731 (W.D. Tex. 2006). In Okeezie I, the District Court addressed the Suspension Clause issue, holding that RIDA must be interpreted as preserving, rather than destroying, judicial review because to interpret it otherwise would be to risk an unconstitutional suspension of the writ. However, the 3 We would note that, in Chen, the alien proceeded pro se and the Court of Appeals did not grant oral argument. 20 District Court changed course on reconsideration in Okeezie II, adopting the Government’s argument and vacating its opinion in Okeezie I. The reason for this change seems rooted in the case’s strange procedural posture. Okeezie received his final order of removal on February 3, 2005, and then, nearly a month after RIDA was passed, filed a petition for review with the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Without any discussion, the Court of Appeals granted the Government’s motion to dismiss – a motion predicated on the same arguments advanced here. Okeezie then proceeded to file a habeas petition in the Western District of Texas and essentially attempted to relitigate the jurisdictional arguments he had made before the Court of Appeals. Although the District Court initially denied the Government’s motion to dismiss in Okeezie I, it is clear that, on reconsideration in Okeezie II, the District Court realized that there was “a substantial conflict between the Fifth Circuit ruling and the Court’s May 4, 2006 Order [in Okeezie I].” Okeezie II, 462 F. Supp. 2d at 734. Therefore, in order to “[a]her[e] to the Fifth Circuit’s dismissal of Okeezie’s petition for review,” the District Court granted the Government’s motion to dismiss. Id. at 735. In sum, though only two known opinions, Fontes II and Okeezie I, have commented on the Suspension Clause issues raised in this case, both have noted that the Suspension Clause challenge, raised now by Kolkevich, is “colorable,” if not 21 problematic.4 Although the issue is one of first impression for this Court,5 we have previously dealt with other ambiguities in 4 Other cases dealing with this issue are now pending in the Courts of Appeals for the Second and the Ninth Circuits. See Williamson v. Gonzales, No. 05-3662 (2d Cir. filed July 19, 2005); Ruiz-Martinez v. Gonzales, No. 05-2903 (2d Cir. filed June 16, 2005); Monroy v. Gonzales, No. 07-75287 (9th Cir. filed Sept. 8, 2005). 5 We note that our non-precedential opinion in Scott v. Attorney General, 171 Fed Appx. 404 (3d Cir. 2006), presents a factual scenario somewhat similar to the one currently before us. Although we do not typically cite to non-precedential opinions, and although they are not binding precedent in this circuit, see Third Circuit Internal Operating Procedure 5.7 (indicating that non-precedential “opinions are not regarded as precedents that bind the court because they do not circulate to the full court before filing”), the Government cites it as persuasive authority, and therefore, we believe it appropriate to comment on it here. In Scott, a criminal alien, like Kolkevich, received his final order of removal on April 15, 2005 – less than 30 days before RIDA became law – and filed a § 2241 habeas petition on May 20, 2005. We ruled that Scott’s petition was not timely filed because he failed to file it by May 15, 2005 – 30 days from his final order of removal – despite the fact that the alien was not on notice of the 30-day time limit until four days prior to the period’s expiration. The Government argues that, just as in Scott, we should apply the 30-day time limit (continued...) 22 RIDA. In Bonhometre v. Gonzales, 414 F.3d 442 (3d Cir. 2005), issued just after RIDA’s enactment, we discovered that, while RIDA provides for the transfer of habeas petitions pending in district courts at the time of the Act’s effective date, it “was silent as to what was to be done with an appeal from a district court habeas decision that is now pending before a court of appeals.” 414 F.3d at 446. Bonhometre, of course, dealt with a case falling precisely into that situation. To resolve the issue, we employed a flexible approach that sought to vindicate Congress’s intent “to have all challenges to removal orders heard in a single forum (the court of appeals)” and, therefore 5 (...continued) strictly in this case, especially because, as the Government suggests, Scott presented facts “more sympathetic” to the alien than those presented here. Br. for Appellee at 21. However, Scott had some opportunity for judicial review. Here, were we to accept the Government’s interpretation of RIDA, Kolkevich would have no opportunity for judicial review. Therefore, it is hard for us to imagine how the facts of this case are less sympathetic than those in Scott. Indeed it is this difference – Scott had time to file and Kolkevich did not – that distinguishes Scott from the case before us. While it may be that, in Scott, we did not explore whether a four-day petition for review filing period was constitutionally sufficient, that question is simply not presented here. Here, we must address whether an alien can be stripped of any opportunity for judicial review. Therefore, both Scott’s non-precedential status and its significant differences render the case irrelevant to the issue before us. 23 determined that “those habeas petitions that were pending before this Court on the effective date of the REAL ID Act are properly converted to petitions for review and retained by this Court.” Id. To effect this conversion, we decided that we would disregard the District Court’s habeas decision and move forward as if it had never happened. Although this case does not implicate precisely the same issues, Bonhometre counsels that we should eschew a formalistic reading of RIDA in favor of one that seeks to fulfill Congress’s broader goals and purposes. We believe that such an approach is similarly called for here.
Our analysis begins with the Suspension Clause. Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution provides that “[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” “Because of that Clause, some ‘judicial intervention in deportation cases’ is unquestionably ‘required by the Constitution.’” St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 300 (quoting Heikkila v. Barber, 345 U.S. 229, 235 (1953)). However, the Suspension Clause does not require Congress to guarantee aliens the right to petition for habeas in a district court at all times and under all circumstances. For example, there is no question that the current regime, in which aliens may petition for review in a court of appeals but may not file habeas, is constitutional. This is because “the substitution of a new collateral remedy which is 24 both adequate and effective” satisfies the requirements of the Suspension Clause. Swain v. Pressly, 430 U.S. 372, 381 (1977). In St. Cyr, the Supreme Court confronted a situation nearly identical to the one before us. The provisions of AEDPA and IIRIRA at issue in that case threatened to strip criminal aliens of all judicial review, if read as the INS then suggested. Rather than read those acts as doing so – an interpretation that, in the Supreme Court’s view, would have risked violation of the Suspension Clause – the Court interpreted the statutes as preserving review. Indeed, the Court made clear that even having to inquire into the relationship between habeas corpus and immigration was enough to counsel against a reading of AEDPA and IIRIRA that would deny aliens review. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 301 n.13 (“The fact that this Court would be required to answer the difficult question of what the Suspension Clause protects is in and of itself a reason to avoid answering the constitutional questions that would be raised by concluding that review was barred entirely.”). Here, if we accept the Government’s position and conclude that Kolkevich’s right to judicial review was lost when he failed to file a petition for review within 30 days after the issuance of his removal order, we would undoubtedly face exactly the “serious constitutional question[]” regarding the Suspension Clause that the Supreme Court faced in St. Cyr because, as of May 11, 2005, Kolkevich was left without any opportunity for judicial review of his order of removal. 25 Prior to RIDA’s enactment, Kolkevich could not have filed a petition for review with this Court because no such relief was available. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(c). After RIDA became law and criminal aliens were granted the ability to file petitions for review, more than 30 days had elapsed since Kolkevich received his final order of removal and, therefore, the petition for review process never became available to him. Additionally, according to the Government’s interpretation Kolkevich could no longer file a § 2241 petition after RIDA’s enactment. In short, under the Government’s reading of RIDA Kolkevich went from a position where, on May 10, 2005, he could have filed habeas to a position where, on May 11, 2005, he could have filed neither habeas nor the substitute to habeas provided by Congress. Therefore, the Government’s interpretation of the statutory scheme put in place by RIDA would deny Kolkevich any opportunity for judicial review. The Government’s arguments to the contrary are entirely unpersuasive. First, it argues that Kolkevich could have filed a motion for reconsideration of his removal order with the BIA pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(b) and that this would have sufficed as a form of judicial review. However, “[a]t its historical core, the writ of habeas corpus has served as a means of reviewing the legality of Executive detention, and it is in that context that its protections have been strongest.” St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 301 (emphasis added). A motion to reconsider before the BIA is simply another point on the continuum of Executive action – it does not constitute judicial review of Executive 26 action. Indeed, the Government’s argument is akin to saying that an appeal from the IJ to the BIA is an effective alternative to habeas because the BIA reviews the IJ. A motion to reconsider, like the BIA’s review of an IJ, is simply another phase of an administrative agency’s adjudicative process – it is not a collateral proceeding designed to review the legality of that process. Furthermore, the agency’s consideration of such a motion is clearly narrower in scope than a court’s “review” function. Therefore, a motion to reconsider pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2 is not an “adequate and effective” substitute for habeas. Second, the Government argues that Kolkevich could have had judicial review of the BIA’s decision had he filed his § 2241 petition during the 51-day period between the BIA’s final order, on March 21, 2005, and the enactment of RIDA, on May 11, 2005. The Government concedes, and it is not disputed, that Kolkevich was under no obligation to file his § 2241 petition within that 51-day period or, in fact, within any period. On the day before President Bush signed RIDA, Kolkevich had a clear and unfettered right to file a habeas petition – a right neither extinguished nor diminished by his choice not to file up until that point.6 On May 11, 2005, that 6 Under § 2241, an individual is required to be “in custody under or by authority of the United States” in order to file a habeas petition. 28 U.S.C. § 2241(c)(1). Although Kolkevich (continued...) 27 right was taken away. To say that Kolkevich could have filed before RIDA was passed simply does not address whether, after RIDA became law, Kolkevich’s right to habeas had been replaced with an “adequate and effective substitute.” Given the Government’s failure to explain how, following RIDA, Kolkevich continued to have access to habeas or an alternative to it, the Government’s argument – that we are without jurisdiction to hear Kolkevich’s appeal – presents us with two options. The first is to declare RIDA unconstitutional as applied to Kolkevich and remand the case to the District 6 (...continued) is, and has been, “in custody,” his confinement is under the authority of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not that of the United States. Although this distinction is generally a meaningful one for § 2241 purposes, it is irrelevant here, where the “custody” at issue is not Kolkevich’s current confinement but, rather, the “restraint on liberty” that arises out of his order of removal. “[A]n individual subject to a final deportation order issued by the INS or its successor agency is in custody for § 2241 purposes.” Kumarasamy v. Att’y Gen., 453 F.3d 169, 173 (3d Cir. 2006); see also Rosales v. Bureau of Immigration & Customs Enforcement, 426 F.3d 733, 735 (5th Cir. 2005) (“As the Supreme Court recently noted [in Padilla v. Rumsfeld, 42 U.S. 426, 437 (2004)], physical detention (or here, physical detention by federal, rather than state, authority) is no longer required for a petitioner to meet the custody requirement and obtain habeas relief.”). 28 Court for habeas proceedings. This option is not a favorable one. As the Supreme Court made clear in St. Cyr, “if an otherwise acceptable construction of a statute would raise serious constitutional problems, and where an alternative interpretation of the statute is fairly possible, we are obligated to construe the statute to avoid such problems.” St. Cyr at 299300 (internal quotations and citations omitted). This directive leads us to the second option: adopt an “alternative interpretation” of RIDA that would allow Kolkevich review of his final order of removal in a court of appeals. Because such an “alternative interpretation” of RIDA is “fairly possible,” the second option is the best course. We should follow the first option only if we are convinced that Congress intended to eliminate all the habeas rights of an alien in Kolkevich’s position. The Supreme Court has made clear that we should analyze statutes that could be read as infringing on habeas rights with special scrutiny. “Implications from statutory text or legislative history are not sufficient to repeal habeas jurisdiction; instead, Congress must articulate specific and unambiguous statutory directives to effect a repeal.” Id. at 299. We are also mindful of “both the strong presumption in favor of judicial review of administrative action and the longstanding rule requiring a clear statement of congressional intent to repeal habeas jurisdiction.” Id. at 298. Here, although the Government’s interpretation of RIDA may be an “acceptable construction” of the statute, the Act nevertheless does not contain a “specific and unambiguous statutory 29 directive[]” sufficiently communicating Congress’s intent to deprive Kolkevich of all judicial review, such that we can conclude that, in RIDA, Congress took the extraordinary step of suspending the writ with respect to those who, like Kolkevich, received final orders of removal more than 30 days prior to the Act’s enactment. Although RIDA § 106(b) indicates that the Act “shall apply to cases in which the final administrative order of removal, deportation, or exclusion was issued before, on, or after the date of . . . enactment,” this is the only portion of the Act that specifically addresses those who received final orders of removal prior to the Act’s enactment. And yet, this section contains nothing about habeas, nothing about the Suspension Clause, and nothing about judicial review. In fact, to conclude that RIDA has suspended the writ with respect to Kolkevich, one must look to the interplay of three different provisions: RIDA § 106(b), indicating that RIDA shall apply to all prior orders of removal; RIDA § 106(a)(1)(B), now codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(5), indicating that petitions for review are to “be the sole and exclusive means for judicial review of an order of removal”; and 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1), indicating that a “petition for review must be filed not later than 30 days after the date of the final order of removal.” Indeed, the last of these provisions, 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1), pre-dated RIDA. Therefore, rather than there being one “clear indication” of Congressional intent, there is instead a patchwork of different statutes that, individually, have no direct effect on Kolkevich’s appeal and 30 that only produce such an effect when read in combination. To emerge from this statutory labyrinth with the conclusion that Congress sought to deprive Kolkevich of his right to habeas would be to rely on exactly the sort of “[i]mplications from statutory text” that, in St. Cyr, the Supreme Court said were insufficient to communicate a suspension of the writ. Additionally, RIDA’s legislative history makes clear that, rather than intending it to deprive aliens of judicial review, Congress saw the Act as a vehicle by which it could ensure that all aliens received an equal opportunity to have their challenges heard. In the House Report accompanying RIDA, Congress made clear that [u]nder section 106, all aliens who are ordered removed by an immigration judge will be able to appeal to the BIA and then raise constitutional and legal challenges in the courts of appeals. No alien, not even criminal aliens, will be deprived of judicial review of such claims. Unlike AEDPA and IIRIRA, which attempted to eliminate judicial review of criminal aliens’ removal orders, section 106 would give every alien one day in the court of appeals, satisfying constitutional concerns. The Supreme Court has held that in supplanting the writ of habeas corpus with an alternative scheme, Congress need only provide a scheme which is an “adequate and effective” substitute for habeas 31 corpus. Indeed, in St. Cyr . . ., the Supreme Court recognized that “Congress could, without raising any constitutional questions, provide an adequate substitute through the court of appeals.” By placing all review in the courts of appeals, [RIDA] would provide an “adequate and effective” alternative to habeas corpus. H.R. Rep. No. 109-72, at 174-75 (internal citations omitted) (emphasis added). Not only does the House Report demonstrate that Congress had no desire to deprive any alien of his or her right to judicial review of a removal order, it clearly indicates that Congress acted to preserve review for “every alien.” Moreover, the House Report explicitly demonstrates Congress’s intention to craft legislation that comported with the Suspension Clause as well as the holding in St. Cyr. In light of these exceedingly clear statements, and the ambiguity in the statutory scheme, we simply cannot say that Congress intended to risk running afoul of the Suspension Clause by suspending the writ of habeas corpus with respect to the small class of aliens who received final orders of removal more than 30 days prior to the enactment of RIDA. For these reasons, we conclude that RIDA must be interpreted as permitting an avenue of appeal for Kolkevich. Specifically, we conclude that RIDA § 106(c) should be read to permit the transfer from a district court to a court of appeals not only of those habeas petitions that were pending in the district 32 court at the time RIDA became law, but also those that could have been brought in a district court prior to RIDA’s enactment, but were not. We further hold that the 30-day time limit in 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1) should not be interpreted as applying to those aliens who received final orders of removal prior to the enactment of RIDA, but who did not file a petition for review directly in a court of appeals until after the enactment of RIDA. As we will explain, however, this does not mean that aliens who received orders of removal before RIDA have an unlimited time to bring their appeal after RIDA.