Opinion ID: 2750189
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Applicability of the Due Process Clause

Text: We first confront the threshold question whether the Due Process Clause, with its attendant protections, applied to Raya-Vaca at the time of his expedited removal proceedings. The Supreme Court has categorically declared that once an individual has entered the United States, he is entitled to the protection of the Due Process Clause.4 In Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of indefinitely detaining aliens who were once admitted to the United States but later ordered removed. 533 U.S. 678, 682 (2001). In holding unconstitutional the indefinite detention of an alien present within the United States, the Court distinguished the situation at hand from one involving an alien seeking entry into the country: The distinction between an alien who has effected an entry into the United States and one who has never entered runs throughout immigration law. . . . [O]nce an alien enters the country, [his] legal circumstance changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all “persons” within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent. 4 The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment provides that “[n]o person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” UNITED STATES V. RAYA-VACA 13 Id. at 693 (citations omitted). Similarly, when considering whether certain conditions could be placed on an alien’s eligibility for federal medical insurance, the Supreme Court stated, There are literally millions of aliens within the jurisdiction of the United States. The Fifth Amendment, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, protects every one of these persons from deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Even one whose presence in this country is unlawful, involuntary, or transitory is entitled to that constitutional protection. Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U.S. 67, 69, 77 (1976) (citation omitted); see also, e.g., Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206, 212 (1953) (“It is true that aliens who have once passed through our gates, even illegally, may be expelled only after proceedings conforming to . . . due process of law.”). This long line of precedent admits of no exception: an alien who has entered the United States is guaranteed due process protections.5 Here, there is no dispute that Raya-Vaca had entered the United States in July 2011 before he was apprehended near the State Route 94 Border Patrol checkpoint, outside Potrero, California, within the borders of the United States. Even an 5 Aliens who have entered the country are thus distinct from aliens at a port of entry, over whom Congress has plenary power, see Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753, 766 (1972), and for whom the process prescribed by Congress constitutes due process, see United States ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 338 U.S. 537, 544 (1950). 14 UNITED STATES V. RAYA-VACA alien who has run some fifty yards into the United States has entered the country. See United States v. Martin-Plascencia, 532 F.2d 1316, 1317–18 (9th Cir. 1976) (affirming adjudication of illegal entry for alien who had avoided inspection at the border and had run into the country before being apprehended); see also Matter of Z-, 20 I. & N. Dec. 707, 713–14 (BIA 1993) (finding that alien had entered country when he disembarked from his vessel “onto dry land within the territorial boundaries of the United States at an area not designated as a port of entry,” after which he “fled for some distance into the interior”). Heeding, as we must, the Supreme Court’s repeated pronouncement that the Due Process Clause applies to all who have entered the United States—legally or not—and given the clear fact of Raya-Vaca’s entry, we hold that RayaVaca was entitled to expedited removal proceedings that conformed to the dictates of due process.6