Court Opinion

ID: 9928762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-01-31 22:00:52.654444+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:49.438189
License: Public Domain

In the

     United States Court of Appeals
                  For the Seventh Circuit
                      ____________________
No. 23-1392
MELODY PAK, et al.,
                                                Plaintiffs-Appellants,
                                  v.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., et al.,
                                               Defendants-Appellees.
                      ____________________

          Appeal from the United States District Court for the
                    Western District of Wisconsin.
      No. 22-cv-00250-slc — Stephen L. Crocker, Magistrate Judge.
                      ____________________

  ARGUED SEPTEMBER 26, 2023 — DECIDED JANUARY 31, 2024
                ____________________

   Before WOOD, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.
    WOOD, Circuit Judge. This case tells the tale of four Iranian
nationals who hoped to obtain visas to enter the United States.
They wanted to reunite with their family members—three
U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident—who reside
in this country. But the story does not have a happy ending,
both because of the applicants’ history and because of the lim-
its on judicial review of consular action. Decades ago, these
four people completed mandatory military service in Iran’s
2                                                   No. 23-1392

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). After the IRGC
was formally designated a terrorist organization many years
later, in 2019, consular oﬃcers denied all four visa applica-
tions on terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds (TRIG).
None of the applicants was granted a TRIG exemption. The
four visa applicants and their family members (together, the
Plaintiﬀs) then filed this action.
    They brought various claims against the President of the
United States and several federal oﬃcials responsible for in-
vestigating, processing, and adjudicating immigrant visa ap-
plications. Plaintiﬀs allege that Defendants have a systemic
practice of depriving visa applicants the opportunity to estab-
lish eligibility for TRIG exemptions, and that this practice vi-
olates their rights under the Administrative Procedure Act
(APA), 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) and (D), and the Fifth Amend-
ment’s Due Process Clause.
    The district court determined that the doctrine of consular
nonreviewability precludes judicial review of this action and
dismissed it under FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6). Because the Su-
preme Court’s decisions in Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753
(1972), and Kerry v. Din, 576 U.S. 86 (2015), leave no room for
a contrary conclusion, we aﬃrm.
                                I
                       A. Legal background
   Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA or the
Act), 8 U.S.C. § 1361, noncitizens bear the burden of establish-
ing their eligibility for a visa to enter the United States. Con-
sular oﬃcers are responsible for determining whether a visa
applicant is inadmissible under any provision of the Act. Gen-
erally, consular oﬃcers must provide notice to the applicant
No. 23-1392                                                       3

that “states the determination” and “lists the specific provi-
sion or provisions of law under which” a denial is based. Id.
§ 1182(b)(1). But the government is exempt from this notice
requirement when an application is denied based on terror-
ism or national security concerns. Id. § 1182(b)(3).
   For purposes of the INA, a “terrorist organization” is an
organization:
   (I)     Designated under section 1189 of [Title 8];
   (II)    Otherwise designated, upon publication in the Fed-
           eral Register, by the Secretary of State in consulta-
           tion with or upon the request of the Attorney Gen-
           eral or the Secretary of Homeland Security, as a ter-
           rorist organization, after finding that the organiza-
           tion engages in [terrorist] activities … ; or
   (III)   That is a group of two or more individuals, whether
           organized or not, which engages in, or has a sub-
           group that engages in, [terrorist] activities.
Id. § 1182(a)(3)(B)(vi).
    These three types of terrorist organizations are known as
Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III terrorist organizations, respectively.
As the text indicates, Tier I and Tier II terrorist organizations
are formally designated. In contrast, consular oﬃcers deter-
mine on a case-by-case basis whether an organization quali-
fies as a Tier III terrorist organization.
    Section 1182(a)(3)(B) of the INA sets forth a long list of
“[t]errorism activities” that constitute grounds for inadmissi-
bility. A consular oﬃcer need only “know[] or ha[ve] reason
to believe” that the applicant meets any of these grounds to
deny a visa application. Id. § 1201(g). One such ground
4                                                     No. 23-1392

applies if an applicant “has received military-type train-
ing … from or on behalf of any organization that, at the time
the training was received, was a [Tier I, II, or III] terrorist or-
ganization.” Id. § 1182(a)(3)(B)(i)(VIII).
    The INA also provides the Executive Branch discretionary
authority to grant waivers and exemptions to certain groups
and individuals who otherwise would be inadmissible on ter-
rorism-related grounds. According to the Foreign Aﬀairs
Manual issued by the State Department, exemptions cannot
be granted to applicants who “voluntarily and knowingly re-
ceived military-type training from a Tier I or II terrorist or-
ganization.” Visa applicants may overcome ineligibility for an
exemption under this provision by establishing that their past
terrorism activities occurred “under duress or without rele-
vant knowledge.” In the end, however, section
1182(d)(3)(B)(i) authorizes the Secretaries of State and Home-
land Security (after consultation with each other and the At-
torney General), to determine in their “sole unreviewable dis-
cretion” that an applicant should (or should not) be exempt
from section 1182(a)(3)(B).
                     B. Factual allegations
    The district court’s opinion provides a thorough review of
the factual allegations pertinent to this case; we only summa-
rize them. See Pak v. Biden, No. 22-cv-250-slc, 2023 WL 22077
(W.D. Wis. Jan. 3, 2023). Plaintiﬀs Ali Pak, John Doe 2, Vahid
Fatouraee, and Armin Fathinejad are four law-abiding Iranian
nationals who applied between 2014 and 2020 for visas to en-
ter the United States. Ali Pak hoped to reunite with his daugh-
ter, Plaintiﬀ Melody Pak, a lawful permanent resident com-
pleting her Ph.D. in the United States. Plaintiﬀs John Doe 1,
Maryam Fatouraei, and Kambiz Fathinejad, are U.S. citizens
No. 23-1392                                                    5

who filed family-based petitions on behalf of John Doe 2, Va-
hid Fatouraee, and Armin Fathinejad.
    At various points between 1980 and 2008, the four visa-ap-
plicant plaintiﬀs had completed mandatory military service
in the IRGC—a branch of the Iranian military to which they
were randomly assigned. They allege that their service was
entirely nonmilitary, consisting instead of civil-service tasks
such as washing dishes, handing out clothing to underserved
communities, and building infrastructure in rural areas. As
part of the visa application process, each of them submitted
their IRGC military identification card. These cards provide
basic identifying information such as height, weight, eye
color, years of service, and military rank.
    On April 8, 2019, the State Department formally desig-
nated the IRGC a Tier I terrorist organization. See In re Desig-
nation of the IRGC (and Other Aliases) as a Foreign Terrorist Or-
ganization, 84 Fed. Reg. 15278 (Apr. 15, 2019). Consular oﬃc-
ers then began refusing visas to applicants who served in the
IRGC after April 2019, citing section 1182(a)(3)(B). But consu-
lar oﬃcers also issued denials to the four visa-applicant plain-
tiﬀs here, each of whom completed their service in the IRGC
long before it was designated a Tier I terrorist organization.
The denial notices that they received provided no explanation
other than a citation to section 1182(a)(3)(B).
    Plaintiﬀs allege that when the visa-applicant plaintiﬀs re-
quested that they be considered for a TRIG exemption, De-
fendants provided inconsistent, and occasionally inaccurate,
information on how or whether they could apply for an ex-
emption. For example, when three of the visa-applicant plain-
tiﬀs contacted the embassy to inquire about the exemption
process, they were directed to file a waiver application with
6                                                    No. 23-1392

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
That advice was just wrong: USCIS lacks the authority to
waive TRIG ineligibility. Some of the visa-applicant plaintiﬀs
submitted written statements to the embassy, explaining that
their service in the IRGC consisted of civil-service tasks, that
they never received military-type training, and that they had
no knowledge at the time of service that the IRGC was a ter-
rorist organization (nor could they have known, given that
the designation came more than a decade later). None of the
visa-applicant plaintiﬀs was granted a TRIG exemption, nor
were they even oﬀered an explanation.
    On May 5, 2022, Plaintiﬀs filed this action. They allege that
Defendants have a systemic practice of depriving visa appli-
cants of the opportunity to establish eligibility for TRIG ex-
emptions, and that as a result, Plaintiﬀs have suﬀered im-
measurable hardship from having been physically separated
from their family members. Plaintiﬀs brought claims under
the APA, the doctrine recognized in United States ex rel. Accardi
v. Shaughnessy, 347 U.S. 260 (1954) (requiring agencies to fol-
low their own rules and procedures), and the Due Process
Clause of the Fifth Amendment. They seek a writ of manda-
mus ordering Defendants to implement a process for consid-
ering visa applicants for TRIG exemptions consistently and in
good faith. See 28 U.S.C. § 1361.
    The district court ruled that the doctrine of consular non-
reviewability precluded judicial review of Plaintiﬀs’ claims.
On that basis, it granted Defendants’ motion to dismiss the
action under FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6). See Pak, supra, 2023 WL
22077 at *15; see also Morfin v. Tillerson, 851 F.3d 710, 711 (7th
Cir. 2017) (holding that consular nonreviewability is an issue
No. 23-1392                                                       7

of a case’s merits rather than of the court’s subject matter ju-
risdiction). Plaintiﬀs now appeal.
                                 II
    “Congress has delegated the power to determine who may
enter the country to the Executive Branch, and courts gener-
ally have no authority to second-guess the Executive’s deci-
sions.” Yafai v. Pompeo, 912 F.3d 1018, 1020 (7th Cir. 2019) (cit-
ing Mandel, 408 U.S. at 769–70). The doctrine of consular non-
reviewability stems from these separation-of-powers princi-
ples. It instructs that ordinarily, visa decisions made by con-
sular oﬃcers abroad are not subject to judicial review. Hazama
v. Tillerson, 851 F.3d 706, 708 (7th Cir. 2017). In an eﬀort to cir-
cumvent this doctrine, Plaintiﬀs insist that they do not seek
judicial review of any individual consular oﬃcer’s decision.
Rather, they frame this action as a challenge to the legal struc-
ture that Defendants have erected for processing TRIG ex-
emptions.
   The proper characterization of the claims before us is a
question of law, and thus something we decide inde-
pendently. We begin with a fundamental point: Plaintiﬀs have
standing to assert their claims only because consular oﬃcers
denied visas to four of them (thereby inflicting injury in fact,
caused by the oﬃcer’s decision, and redressable by manda-
mus). Moreover, the doctrine of consular nonreviewability
applies even where a plaintiﬀ challenges some other, related
aspect of a consular oﬃcer’s decision to deny a visa. For ex-
ample, in Matushkina v. Nielsen, the plaintiﬀ ostensibly chal-
lenged a Customs and Border Patrol inadmissibility determi-
nation that had formed the basis of the unfavorable visa deci-
sion. 877 F.3d 289, 295 (7th Cir. 2017). We described this as an
“indirect attack” on the visa denial itself, and therefore held
8                                                  No. 23-1392

that it fell within the scope of consular nonreviewability. Id.
The same logic applies here, as we cannot review a TRIG ex-
emption determination without first assessing a consular of-
ficer’s inadmissibility determination.
    Similarly, Plaintiﬀs cannot shield their claims from the
doctrine of consular nonreviewability by “repackaging [their]
substantive complaints as procedural objections.” See Doe v.
McAleenan, 926 F.3d 910, 911 (7th Cir. 2019). Although some
consular oﬃcers did not pursue a TRIG exemption on behalf
of the visa-applicant plaintiﬀs and others provided misinfor-
mation on how to seek an exemption, what Plaintiﬀs really
want is to be granted TRIG exemptions (or to have exemp-
tions granted for their close relatives). Yet Congress left ex-
emption determinations to the “sole unreviewable discretion”
of the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, 8 U.S.C.
§ 1182(d)(3)(B)(i), which makes Plaintiﬀs’ choice to target the
exemption process particularly untenable. Because Plaintiﬀs’
claims cannot be divorced from a substantive challenge to the
Executive’s discretionary decisions, we must presume that
their claims are unreviewable. Matushkina, 877 F.3d at 295.
                              III
    But our inquiry does not end there. Mandel identified a
narrow exception to the doctrine of consular nonreviewabil-
ity. This exception applies when a visa denial implicates the
constitutional rights of a U.S. citizen. See 408 U.S. at 769–70.
Even then, however, a court may not “look behind” the con-
sular oﬃcer’s decision if it is based on a “facially legitimate
and bona fide reason.” Id.; see also Yafai, 912 F.3d at 1021.
   Invoking this exception, Plaintiﬀs urge that the Due Pro-
cess Clause of the Fifth Amendment protects the right of a
No. 23-1392                                                   9

U.S. citizen to live with his or her family members. Even as-
suming that there is such a right, its “status … is uncertain.”
Yafai, 912 F.3d at 1021. In Din, the Supreme Court split on the
question whether a U.S. citizen has a cognizable interest in
living with his or her spouse: four Justices would have held
that the plaintiﬀ did have such an interest, three said the
plaintiﬀ did not, and two assumed for the sake of argument
that such an interest existed. See generally 576 U.S. 86 (2015).
We have refrained from taking a position on the issue since
Din, and once again, we see no reason to do so for purposes
of the present case. See Yafai, 912 F.3d at 1021. We instead as-
sume for the sake of argument that the denials of the visa-ap-
plicant plaintiﬀs’ applications did implicate the constitutional
rights of their U.S. citizen family members. (As the district
court observed, this path is not available to Plaintiﬀ Melody
Pak, who is a noncitizen lawful permanent resident.)
    Plaintiﬀs’ claims nonetheless fail because the record con-
tains no evidence that defeats the presumption that the con-
sular oﬃcers’ decisions were facially legitimate and bona fide.
The Supreme Court repeatedly has held that the government
need only provide a citation to a valid statutory provision to
support a visa denial. See Din, 576 U.S. at 105 (Kennedy, J.,
concurring); see also Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 2419
(2018). In Din, the Court confronted the very statutory provi-
sion at issue here. Justice Kennedy’s concurrence controls. He
concluded that because section 1182(a)(3)(B) “specifies dis-
crete factual predicates that the consular oﬃcer must find to
exist before denying a visa,” a citation to it suﬃces to show
that the consular oﬃcer’s decision was facially legitimate and
bona fide. 576 U.S. at 105–06 (Kennedy, J., concurring). We
note, however, that at least one other court has found that this
is not necessarily true of other statutory provisions. See
10                                                  No. 23-1392

Muñoz v. United States Dep’t of State, 50 F.4th 906, 917–18 (9th
Cir. 2022) (concluding that section 1182(a)(3)(A)(ii) does not
“specif[y] discrete factual predicates,” and so the government
must identify “a fact in the record” to support a visa denial
based on that provision), cert. granted in part sub nom. Dep’t of
State v. Muñoz, No. 23-334, 2024 WL 133818, at *1 (U.S. Jan. 12,
2024). In our view, the issue in Muñoz is distinct from the one
before us, and so we do not need to hold this case for the Su-
preme Court’s ruling.
   The record in the present case supplies “at least a facial
connection to terrorist activity,” and this is enough to support
the challenged visa denials. 576 U.S. at 105 (Kennedy, J., con-
curring). Each visa-applicant plaintiﬀ completed miliary ser-
vice in the IRGC—a branch of the Iranian military that later
was designated a Tier I terrorist organization. Each of them
submitted their IRGC military identification card to the con-
sular oﬃcer as part of the visa application process. The record
thus “forecloses any contention that the [consular oﬃcers
were] imagining things.” Morfin, 851 F.3d at 713.
                               IV
    Having determined that the challenged decisions are fa-
cially legitimate and bona fide, we have one more question to
consider. Din recognized that an “aﬃrmative showing of bad
faith” that is “plausibly alleged with suﬃcient particularity”
might justify more searching review. 576 U.S. at 105 (Ken-
nedy, J., concurring). Our decision in Yafai left open the possi-
bility that “evidence of behind-the-scenes bad faith can over-
come Mandel’s rule that courts must stick to the face of the
visa denial in evaluating it.” 912 F.3d at 1022.
No. 23-1392                                                   11

    Whatever residual authority courts have to review visa de-
cisions on this ground, the circumstances presented here do
not trigger it. No evidence in the record suggests that any
kind of improper bias, dishonest belief, or “illicit motive” lay
behind the consular oﬃcers’ decisions. Id. Plaintiﬀs point out
that some of the applicants presented evidence to consular of-
ficers explaining that their military service consisted of menial
civil-service tasks. But Plaintiﬀs conceded during oral argu-
ment that they presented this evidence after their visa appli-
cations were denied. This timing matters. In determining
whether an applicant is eligible for a visa, consular oﬃcers are
required to consider “[a]ll documents and other evidence pre-
sented.” 22 C.F.R. § 41.105(a). We might be able to infer bad
faith “if [an applicant] had presented strong evidence … that
the consular oﬃcer refused to consider.” Morfin, 851 F.3d at
713–14. Yet once a visa denial has been issued, no statute or
regulation obligates consular oﬃcers to re-open an applica-
tion just because new evidence has been presented.
    Plaintiﬀs next ask us to infer bad faith from the fact that
consular oﬃcers never prompted them to oﬀer evidence
(other than their military identification cards) about their ser-
vice for the IRGC. But it was Plaintiﬀs’ burden to present
whatever evidence they had. In addition, we have no way of
knowing whether some or all of the files contained other evi-
dence, developed independently by the government, that
supported the consular oﬃcers’ decisions. In the present cir-
cumstances, we cannot draw an inference of bad faith without
violating Mandel’s instruction not to “look behind” a consular
oﬃcer’s decision. 408 U.S. at 770. And, in matters concerning
national security, this instruction carries “particular force.”
Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. at 2419 (quoting Din, 576 U.S. at
104 (Kennedy, J., concurring)).
12                                                 No. 23-1392

    We are not without sympathy for these applicants; the
frustration of not knowing why they failed to qualify for TRIG
exemptions is undoubtedly great. We can only wonder why
this was the outcome and who was ultimately responsible for
it. The Foreign Aﬀairs Manual allows for exemptions to
“overcome ineligibility for past terrorist activity associated”
with a Tier I terrorist organization “if the applicant acted un-
der duress or without the relevant knowledge.” It seems from
the record before us that the visa-applicant plaintiﬀs are
strong candidates for this criterion, as they completed their
compulsory service long before the IRGC was designated a
Tier I terrorist organization.
    What Plaintiﬀs are really seeking, however, is an explana-
tion for their visa denials and TRIG exemption determina-
tions (or, perhaps a citation to the specific provision under
section 1182(a)(3)(B) on which their visa denials were based).
Yet the Supreme Court has made clear that a citation to section
1182(a)(3)(B) is all the explanation to which they are entitled.
See Din, 576 U.S. at 105 (Kennedy, J., concurring). And Con-
gress has unambiguously directed that TRIG exemption de-
terminations be left to the Executive’s “sole unreviewable dis-
cretion.” See 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(3)(B)(i). In the absence of any
serious allegations of bad faith, we lack the authority to re-
view the challenged decisions.
     The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.