Opinion ID: 858320
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 1226(c) subclass.

Text: In addressing Section 1226(c), we do not write on a blank slate. In Demore, an LPR who conceded deportability as an aggravated felon raised a due process challenge to his mandatory detention under § 1226(c). Demore, 538 U.S. at 517–18, 523. The Supreme Court first reviewed at some length Congress’s stated reasons for mandating detention of the aliens to whom Section 1226(c) applies, emphasizing concerns about flight and recidivism under the prior regime. Id. at 518–21. Ultimately, the Demore majority held that the government was not required to provide individualized determinations of an alien’s dangerousness or flight risk to detain him during his removal proceedings. See id. at 523–25. Noting that the Zadvydas Court had already held that the government’s authority to detain an alien indefinitely pending removal would be constitutionally doubtful, the Demore majority distinguished Zadvydas on two principal grounds. Id. at 527 (citing Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 699). First, while in Zadvydas the petitioners challenged their indefinite detention under circumstances where removal was not practicable, thus undermining the government’s interest in preventing flight, see id. (citing Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 690), detention under Section 1226(c) “necessarily serves the purpose of preventing deportable criminal aliens from fleeing prior to or during their removal proceedings, thus increasing the chance that, if ordered removed, the aliens will be successfully removed.” Id. at 528. Second, Demore emphasized that unlike the detention at issue in Zadvydas, 18 RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS which had no clear termination point, Section 1226(c) applies only during the pendency of removal proceedings and thus has an inherent end point—the conclusion of proceedings: Under § 1226(c), not only does detention have a definite termination point, in the majority of cases it lasts for less than the 90 days we considered presumptively valid in Zadvydas. The Executive Office for Immigration Review has calculated that, in 85% of the cases in which aliens are detained pursuant to § 1226(c), removal proceedings are completed in an average time of 47 days and a median of 30 days . . . . In the remaining 15% of cases, in which the alien appeals the decision of the Immigration Judge to the Board of Immigration Appeals, appeal takes an average of four months, with a median time that is slightly shorter. Id. at 529 (footnote and citations omitted). The Court thus upheld mandatory detention under § 1226(c), though the concurring opinion of Justice Kennedy—whose vote created a majority—noted that “a lawful permanent resident alien such as respondent could be entitled to an individualized determination as to his risk of flight and dangerousness if the continued detention became unreasonable or unjustified.” Id. at 532 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (citing Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 684–86). We have addressed the question of how broadly Demore sweeps in several decisions over the past decade. On each of these occasions, we have consistently held that Demore’s holding is limited to detentions of brief duration. See, e.g., RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS 19 Casas, 535 F.3d at 950 (“References to the brevity of mandatory detention under § 1226(c) run throughout Demore.”); Tijani, 430 F.3d at 1242 (similar); Nadarajah v. Gonzales, 443 F.3d 1069, 1081 (9th Cir. 2006) (“In Demore, the Court grounded its holding by referencing a ‘brief period’ . . . of ‘temporary confinement’ . . . . There is no indication anywhere in Demore that the Court would countenance an indefinite detention.”) (citations omitted). We are by no means the only court to interpret Demore in this way. For instance, in Diop v. ICE/Homeland Security, 656 F.3d 221 (3d Cir. 2011), the Third Circuit construed Demore, in light of Justice Kennedy’s concurrence, as recognizing that “the constitutionality of [mandatory detention] is a function of the length of the detention.” Id. at 232 (“At a certain point, continued detention becomes unreasonable and the Executive Branch’s implementation of § 1226(c) becomes unconstitutional unless the Government has justified its actions at a hearing inquiring into whether continued detention is consistent with the law’s purposes of preventing flight and dangers to the community.”); see also Ly v. Hansen, 351 F.3d 263, 271 (6th Cir. 2003) (“[T]he Court’s discussion in Kim is undergirded by reasoning relying on the fact that Kim, and persons like him, will normally have their proceedings completed within . . . a short period of time and will actually be deported, or will be released. That is not the case here.”). Thus, it is clear that while mandatory detention under § 1226(c) is not constitutionally impermissible per se, the statute cannot be read to authorize mandatory detention of criminal aliens with no limit on the duration of imprisonment. As we held in Casas, “the prolonged detention of an alien without an individualized determination of his dangerousness or flight risk would be constitutionally doubtful.” 535 F.3d 20 RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS at 951 (internal quotation marks omitted). Consistent with our previous decisions, we conclude that, to avoid constitutional concerns, § 1226(c)’s mandatory language must be construed “to contain an implicit ‘reasonable time’ limitation, the application of which is subject to federal-court review.” Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 682. The government relies heavily on Demore in advancing several arguments that the entry of the preliminary injunction was improper, but none is ultimately persuasive. First, the government directs us to the statutory history of §1226(c), arguing that by enacting the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (“IIRIRA”), Congress intentionally undid provisions of the 1990 and 1991 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) that previously granted some discretion to the Attorney General to release criminal aliens pending removal. The government cites Demore’s observation that Congress’s enactment of § 1226(c) hinged on its determination that the flight of aliens released pending removal proceedings, and crimes perpetrated with frequency by those who absconded under the prior regime, were undermining national immigration policy. See Demore, 538 U.S. at 518–19. Moreover, the government argues that the statute’s use of the mandatory “shall” plainly contemplates mandatory detention without a bond hearing. It notes that § 1226(a), which was enacted contemporaneously with § 1226(c), uses discretionary language and that § 1226(c)(2) provides for narrow exceptions to mandatory detention for criminal aliens who materially assist law enforcement. These statutes, the government contends, indicate that Congress knew how to provide for release on bond if it wished to do so. Finally, the government argues that under Zadvydas and Demore, mandatory detention under 1226(c) without a bond hearing is RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS 21 permissible because such detention has a definite termination point. We are not convinced by the government’s reasoning, which relies on a broad reading of Demore foreclosed by our post-Demore cases. Despite the Supreme Court’s holding that mandatory detention under § 1226(c) without an individualized determination of dangerousness or flight risk is constitutional under some circumstances, our subsequent decisions applying Demore make clear that Demore’s reach is limited to relatively brief periods of detention. See Casas, 535 F.3d at 951. Nothing about the district court’s preliminary injunction order requires reading the mandatory detention requirement out of § 1226(c), because “the mandatory, bureaucratic detention of aliens under § 1226(c) was intended to apply for only a limited time,” after which “the Attorney General’s detention authority rests with § 1226(a).” Id. at 948. In other words, the preliminary injunction does not require that anyone held under § 1226(c) receive a bond hearing. Rather, under a fair reading of our precedent, when detention becomes prolonged, § 1226(c) becomes inapplicable. “As a general matter, detention is prolonged when it has lasted six months and is expected to continue more than minimally beyond six months.” Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1092 n.13. Therefore, subclass members who have been detained under § 1226(c) for six months are entitled to a bond hearing because the applicable statutory law, not constitutional law, requires one. Thus, while the government may be correct that reading §1226(c) as anything other than a mandatory detention statute is not a “plausible interpretation[] of [the] statutory text,” Clark v. Martinez, 543 U.S. 371, 381 (2005), it does not argue that reading an implicit temporal limitation on mandatory detention into the statute is implausible. Indeed, it could not do so, because 22 RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS such an argument is foreclosed by our decisions in Tijani and Casas. The government’s attempts to distinguish our postDemore authority are unavailing. It is certainly true, as the government notes, that by its terms Casas concerned an alien who had received an administratively final removal order, sought judicial review, and obtained a remand to the BIA; thus, it did not expressly apply to aliens awaiting the conclusion of their initial administrative proceedings. But this seems to us a distinction without a difference, and the government does not present a persuasive reason why the same protections recognized in Casas should not apply to pre-removal order detainees. “Regardless of the stage of the proceedings, the same important interest is at stake—freedom from prolonged detention.” Diouf II, 634 F.3d at 1087. Indeed, if anything, because LPRs detained prior to the entry of an administratively final removal order have not been adjudicated removable, they would seem to have a greater liberty interest than individuals detained pending judicial review or the pendency of a motion to reopen before the agency, and thus a greater entitlement to a bond hearing. See id. at 1086–87 (suggesting that a detainee who is subject to a final order of removal may have a “lesser liberty interest in freedom from detention”). The government is likewise correct that Diouf II by its terms addressed detention under § 1231(a)(6), not § 1226(c) or § 1225(b). But Diouf II strongly suggested that immigration detention becomes prolonged at the six-month mark regardless of the authorizing statute. See, e.g., id. at 1091–92 (“When detention crosses the six-month threshold and release or removal is not imminent, the private interests at stake are profound.”). Even if Diouf II does not squarely RODRIGUEZ V . ROBBINS 23 hold that detention always becomes prolonged at six months, that conclusion is consistent with the reasoning of Zadvydas, Demore, Casas and Diouf II, and we so hold. The government’s remaining argument against what it calls “a six-month blanket rule” is that such a rule would be contrary to the decisions of other circuits and to the principle that due process inherently must be determined through caseby-case adjudication. Neither contention is compelling. First, the government cites the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Ly, 351 F.3d at 271–73, and the Third Circuit’s decision in Diop, 656 F.3d at 234, both of which declined to establish a brightline time limit on detention without a bond hearing. But both Diop and Ly held that there are substantive limits on the length of detention under § 1226(c), and those cases are thus contrary to the government’s position that Demore permits mandatory detention under § 1226(c) irrespective of duration. To the extent Diop and Ly reject a categorical time limit, their reasoning in that respect is inapplicable here, both because this petition is a class action (and thus relief will perforce apply to all detainees) and because we already indicated in Diouf II that detention is presumptively prolonged when it surpasses six months in duration. More fundamentally, the preliminary injunction does not, as the government claims, “embrace an inflexible blanket approach to due process analysis.” Rather, the injunction requires individualized decision-making—in the form of bond hearings that conform to the procedural requirements set forth in Singh. Thus, the 1226(c) subclass members are likely to succeed on the merits.