Court Opinion

ID: 9495864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:12:22.164556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:14.611381
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In deciding these two consolidated cases today, the court makes two holdings that are both quite striking, novel and, in my opinion, incorrect. I therefore respectfully dissent. The court first finds that Congress, in the course of enacting a statute that virtually all concede was designed to tighten immigration procedures, instead amended the statute in' such a way as to obliterate a longstanding distinction that recognized the lessened constitutional protection of persons who had been affirmatively denied entry into the United States, detained at the border, and physically allowed inside the country only as a matter of legislative grace. Instead, the court finds that Congress deliberately accorded such persons the same status as long-time permanent residents. Second, and perhaps even more disturbing, the court essentially accords such persons all of the due process rights of American citizens. The court therefore makes it impossible, in our circuit at least, for the United States government to detain for more than six months any number of aliens who present themselves at our border and are denied entry, or are paroled into the United States only conditionally. It further extends this status regardless of whatever criminal acts those persons may have committed. I believe that this result cannot be derived from the text of the Constitution and is contrary to existing Supreme Court precedent, which the Supreme Court has recently explicitly relied on and refused to overrule.
To begin with the broader holding, the court finds that full due process applies to all persons at or within the borders of the United States, and that such due process is not merely procedural, but essentially accords any such person á right to remain at liberty in the United States comparable to that accorded to United States citizens. It does this by commencing with the unremarkable proposition that the government may not wantonly execute or torture a person, and then extrapolates that the government is disabled from applying its immigration and criminal laws to such ex-cludable aliens in ways that are different from those that apply to deportable aliens.
This holding has nothing to do with what we would generally classify as “process.” Rosales and Carballo have had that, in abundance. They have been able to argue, before independent arbiters, that they are not the persons to whom the law is intended to apply, that they do not come within the reach of the law, and any other procedural issues they may wish to raise. They have had this review before the various levels of the administrative bureaucracy prescribed by Congress and before the courts of the United States. It cannot be disputed that Rosales and Garcia are both “excludable” aliens in that they sought admission to the United States, were detained at the border before entering the United States, and were paroled into the United States only as a matter of grace and on the condition that their parole may be revoked at any time, and especially for the commission of criminal offenses.
All of the many agencies and courts to have considered their cases have ruled that they come within the mandate of Congress that persons who are “excludable” and have committed crimes of sufficient seriousness should be removed from the United States and, if not immediately de-portable, be detained at the discretion of the Attorney General. There is little doubt that Carballo and Rosales fit in this category of excludable aliens who have committed serious offenses. Simply to detail the crimes of which they have been *417convicted, and others of which they have been arrested, makes this abundantly clear. The highlights of Rosales’s criminal career include arrests for aggravated battery, possession of marijuana, burglary and loitering and convictions for possession of marijuana, resisting arrest, grand theft, burglary, grand larceny, escape from a penal institution, and conspiracy with intent to distribute cocaine. Op. at 392. Carballo, no less prolific, has been arrested for aggravated assault, burglary, grand larceny, battery, carrying a concealed weapon and an unlicensed firearm, trespass, and possession of marijuana. He has been convicted of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and robbery. Op. at 393. If this law cannot be applied to these persons, it seems clear that no alien, no matter his degree of criminality, can be subject to this law.
The court provides a number of soothing statements as to how certain actions against such aliens might be permissible, but it provides no principled reasons for such distinctions, nor a square holding that in fact they can be implemented. May parole conditions for excludable alien criminals be more onerous than for citizens? It implies that they may be, by referring to parole conditions and practices applied to Rosales that are not (and constitutionally may not be) applied to criminals on parole. Op. at 395 & nn. 7-8. However, the opinion provides no basis for such a distinction. May Congress prescribe indefinite detention as a punishment for any violation of such conditions when similar punishment does not apply to citizen parole-violators? No answer is given. A careful reading of the court’s logic and rhetoric would indicate that the very same type of attack that is mounted against the congressional mandate here would be found congenial by this court when mounted against any such distinction. Would any more draconian punishment, such as that suggested above, or an enactment that excludable aliens could be detained indefinitely as punishment for any criminal infraction, pass the muster of this court, under its broad rubric of due process, or under its application of the Eighth Amendment? In oral argument, it was indicated that any violation of parole, under current law, was punishable by at most one year’s additional detention. Would it violate the Ex Post Facto Clause for any alien already excluded from this country to have applied to him indefinite detention? Again, no logic is given that would answer the question.
The court’s approach leads to a host of practical problems, both at the level of this circuit and of the nation. As the court indicates, we have jurisdiction only because the INS happened to choose to detain these aliens within the boundaries of this circuit, at FCI Memphis and at Lexington. Op. at 392, 394. Since our holding is generally at odds with those of most other circuits, and explicitly at odds with four other circuits, it may well be that the INS will simply choose to remove from the Sixth Circuit all those aliens to whom this dictate would apply. Carrera-Valdez v. Perryman, 211 F.3d 1046, 1048 (7th Cir.2000); Ho v. Greene, 204 F.3d 1045, 1054-55 (10th Cir.2000); Chi Thon Ngo v. INS, 192 F.3d 390, 397-98 (3d Cir.1999); Guzman v. Tippy, 130 F.3d 64, 66 (2d Cir.1997); see also Barrera-Echavarria v. Rison, 44 F.3d 1441, 1445 (9th Cir.1995); Gisbert v. Attorney General, 988 F.2d 1437, 1448 (5th Cir.1993), amended by 997 F.2d 1122 (5th Cir.1993) (per curiam); Garcia-Mir v. Meese, 788 F.2d 1446, 1449-51 (11th Cir.1986); Palma v. Verdeyen, 676 F.2d 100, 103-04 (4th Cir.1982).
As against these newly minted rights, we have longstanding and clear Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court, in *418determining the scope of due process rights of aliens, has consistently distinguished between deportable and excludable aliens. In Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206, 73 S.Ct. 625, 97 L.Ed. 956 (1953), the Court definitively held that excludable aliens, unlike aliens who are merely deportable, have no constitutional right against indefinite detention in the event that they cannot be returned to their country of origin. Indeed, the circumstances of Mezei were far more compelling than those of Rosales and Carballo. Mezei had committed no crime. He had been a longtime resident of the United States, and had always been law abiding during that time. He simply went abroad for a period of 19 months, and was detained at the border when he returned. The Supreme Court held that he could be detained indefinitely, if no country could be found to take him.
In Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 121 S.Ct. 2491, 150 L.Ed.2d 653 (2001), the Supreme Court reinforced the distinction between excludable and deportable aliens. There, the Court suggested that deporta-ble aliens may have a constitutional right against indefinite detention. Id. at 682, 121 S.Ct. 2491 (suggesting that “indefinite detention beyond the time necessary for removal” of deportable aliens “would raise serious constitutional concerns”). But the Court carefully restricted its concerns to deportable aliens. As the Court explained, “the distinction between an alien who has effected an entry into the United States and one who has never entered runs throughout immigration law.” Id. at 691, 121 S.Ct. 2491. Specifically, the Court recognized again that “it is well established that certain constitutional protections available to persons inside the United States are unavailable to persons outside of our geographic borders,” including those who have not formally “entered” the United States, such as excludable aliens paroled into the United States. Ibid.
The Supreme Court specifically indicated that it was not questioning the validity of Mezei, and noted that the case of Zad-vydas “differed in a critical respect” from Mezei exactly because Mezei had been detained at the border, while Zadvydas had entered the United States. Id. at 693, 121 S.Ct. 2491 (emphasis added). The Supreme Court has recently and emphatically instructed us that we should leave the overruling of Supreme Court precedents to that Court, even if we believe, or divine, that the Court should, or will, overrule them. Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237, 117 S.Ct. 1997, 138 L.Ed.2d 391 (1997). No matter how much the court may disagree with the distinction between excludable and deportable aliens, it simply cannot be disputed that the controlling Supreme Court precedent makes that distinction and holds that excludable aliens do not have a constitutional right to be permitted to remain in the United States at liberty if their removal cannot be seasonably obtained.1
The court’s holding, applying as it does to persons with very extensive criminal records, would obviously apply to persons otherwise blameless, who have simply been detained attempting to enter the United States: After a maximum of six months, if such persons can not be sent elsewhere, they would have to be released into the *419United States, with some possible exception for individualized determinations. Thus, if hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of such persons present themselves at our borders, this court holds that the government of the United States is constitutionally disabled from doing anything, after a short interval, other than set all such persons at liberty in our country. While this result could be good policy, it seems inconceivable that such a disabling of congressional policy choices is consistent with a fair reading of the Immigration and Naturalization Clause of the Constitution, see, e.g., Galvan v. Press, 347 U.S. 522, 531, 74 S.Ct. 737, 98 L.Ed. 911 (1954) (“That the formulation of [policies pertaining to the entry of aliens and their right to remain here] is entrusted exclusively to Congress has become about as firmly imbedded in the legislative and judicial tissues of our body politic as any aspect of our government”), or with the intent of anyone in adopting the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The process that is due to persons to whom the government has explicitly denied entry into the country is quite different from what is due to others, as a matter of constitutional law.
Turning to the statutory argument, the court essentially makes two points. The first is that since the language of IIRIRA uses the term “inadmissible,” it has, therefore, abolished the distinction between ex-cludable and deportable aliens, for all purposes. Op. at 407-408. The court also remarkably concludes, by holding that the statute does not permit indefinite detention for excludable aliens as well, that Congress abolished the distinction with the result of giving excludable aliens the same rights as deportable aliens. Of course, Congress had quite the contrary intention: it sought to tighten immigration regulations. As Congress itself provided in the text of the statute, courts were not to construe IIRIRA to “create any procedural right or benefit that is legally enforceable.” 8 U.S.C. § 1231(h). The intent of Congress is clear that it had intended, by using the language of “inadmissibility,” to subject deportable aliens to the same potential for indefinite detention, if they could not be removed after the commission of a serious crime, that excludable aliens had been subject to both statutorily and constitutionally for years.
The court’s development of a “reasonable time” limitation for the detention of “excludable” aliens is based wholly on the Supreme Court’s effective rewriting of the statute for deportable aliens, which is all that the Court had before it in Zadvydas. Applying this reasonable time limitation to excludable aliens misunderstands the Supreme Court’s analysis in Zadvydas and, more fundamentally, the canon of constitutional avoidance. The Court in Zadvydas did not hold that the text, or even the legislative history, of the statute indicated Congress’s intent to place a reasonable time limitation on the detention of “deportable” aliens. 533 U.S. at 697-98, 121 S.Ct. 2491. Instead, the Court employed the canon of construction that Congress does not intend for its statutes to raise serious constitutional problems, also known as the canon of constitutional avoidance. Id. at 698, 121 S.Ct. 2491. Specifically, the Court relied on the statutory text that the Attorney General “may” detain individuals after the removal period. Id. at 697, 121 S.Ct. 2491. For the Court, this permissive language did not necessarily confer unfettered discretion on the Attorney General to detain aliens, but must have meant, because of the canon of constitutional avoidance, that the Attorney General should exercise his discretion within constitutional limits. Of course, as demonstrated above, governing Supreme Court precedent, including Zadvydas, clearly indicates that there is no constitutional limit *420on the detention of excludable aliens. Thus, the Attorney General “may,” in his discretion, detain excludable aliens beyond the ninety-day removal period, and the detention need not comply with the reasonable time limitation that cabins his discretion with regard to deportable aliens arising from the canon of constitutional avoidance and nothing else.
Indeed, its merits aside, the canon of constitutional avoidance has historically contemplated precisely such a result. From the beginnings of statutory construction in federal courts, the Supreme Court has held that “an Act of Congress ought not be construed to violate the Constitution if any other possible construction remains available.” See NLRB v. Catholic Bishop, 440 U.S. 490, 500, 99 S.Ct. 1313, 59 L.Ed.2d 533 (1979) (discussing the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall in Murray v. The Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 64, 2 L.Ed. 208 (1804)). The canon of constitutional avoidance is a majoritarian default rule. That is, the canon draws its legitimacy from the premise that Congress generally does not intend for its statutes to exceed constitutional limits. But this supposition cannot be significantly expanded without straining the justification beyond reason. Congress often intends to legislate to, even if not beyond, the limitations of the Constitution. If the canon of constitutional avoidance is to be justifiable, it must at least permit Congress to legislate to the limits of what is constitutionally permissible.
There is no textual source for the Supreme Court’s application of a specific time limitation to the Attorney General’s discretion to detain aliens under IIRIRA. Instead, the word “may” on which the Supreme Court focused in Zadvydas, if the canon of constitutional avoidance is to have any meaning, permits the Attorney General to detain beyond the removal period, but only as allowed by the Constitution. And the Supreme Court is clear that the Constitution does not grant “excludable” aliens a right to release into the United States after a “reasonable time.” Thus, that “de-portable” aliens may only be detained for a “reasonable time” after the removal period but “excludable” aliens may be detained indefinitely is not only a consistent, but the required, reading of § 1231(a)(6) in the context of the canon of constitutional avoidance.
In contrast, our court’s holding that extends the “reasonable time” limitation to excludable aliens is a classic example of the tail wagging the dog. The Supreme Court rewrites a statute with respect to one class of persons, to avoid constitutional doubts, and we are then required to read the statute in the same way in cases where there are no constitutional doubts. This does not follow.
I freely grant that there is some anomaly in having the same words mean different things when applied to different groups of people. However, that is a natural consequence of an aggressive application of the constitutional-doubt standard, implemented by a conceded rewriting of the statute, rather than by choosing between plausible alternatives. And, while certainly not conclusive, the fact that the Supreme Court chose to vacate our previous decision in Rosales-Garcia, which followed the same logic as the court displays today, is some indication that that result is not lambently clear to the Supreme Court. Thoms v. Rosales-Garcia, 534 U.S. 1063, 122 S.Ct. 662, 151 L.Ed.2d 577 (mem.), vacating and remanding Rosales-Garcia v. Holland, 238 F.3d 704 (6th Cir.2001).
Interestingly, Justice Kennedy noted this dilemma in his dissenting opinion. He did characterize both alternatives as unsustainable, but the nature of the situation requires us to accept one or the other. *421Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 710-11, 121 S.Ct. 2491 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). Under these circumstances, I believe it does far less violence to the language of the statute, to congressional intent, and to a proper understanding of the canon of constitutional avoidance to confront the words of the statute and interpret them according to their tenor, in a case where any “constitutional doubt” is far less than in Zadvydas, assuming that there is any doubt whatsoever.
In short, today’s decision, perhaps out of a misplaced concern for the individuals before us, grossly distorts the meaning of a statute, and greatly diminishes the range of policy choices available to the political branches in a field uniquely committed to their discretion. Whether indefinite detention of persons as incorrigible as Rosales and Carballo is good policy is not for us to decide. It is a matter for Congress, subject at most to a requirement that some procedural fairness be applied under the Due Process Clause, a requirement that has been amply fulfilled.

. One of the most perceptive commentators on Mezei argued eloquently for a more nuanced approach that would elide and break down this rigid distinction, based on a number of interesting factors. David A. Martin, Graduated Application of Constitutional Protections for Aliens: The Real Meaning of Zadvydas v Davis, 2001 Sup.Ct. Rev. 47. However, at every step of his article he takes it as a given that the distinction still has vitality, for the time being.