Ali Akbar Azimov v. Usdhs

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: February 20, 2024
• Docket: 22-56034
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FEB 20 2024 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ALI AKBAR AZIMOV; IZATILLO No. 22-56034 GAFFAROV, D.C. No. Plaintiffs-Appellants, 3:22-cv-00439-GPC-KSC

v. MEMORANDUM* U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California Gonzalo P. Curiel, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 6, 2024 Pasadena, California

Before: WARDLAW, FRIEDLAND, and SUNG, Circuit Judges.

Plaintiffs are noncitizens who received expedited removal orders pursuant to

8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1). Plaintiffs subsequently sued Defendants—the government

agencies responsible for implementing the expedited removal system—in district

court. Defendants moved to dismiss Plaintiffs’ complaint, arguing that the district

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. court lacked jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(A). The district court

agreed with Defendants’ reading of § 1252(a)(2)(A) and dismissed Plaintiffs’ case

for lack of jurisdiction. Plaintiffs appealed the district court’s order.

“We review de novo a district court’s decision to dismiss a case for lack of

subject matter jurisdiction.” Martinez v. Napolitano, 704 F.3d 620, 621 (9th Cir.

2012). We have appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm the

district court’s order for the reasons stated below.

Section 1252(a)(2)(A) is a jurisdiction-stripping and channeling provision,

which bars review of almost “every aspect of the expedited removal process.”

Mendoza-Linares v. Garland, 51 F.4th 1146, 1154 (9th Cir. 2022) (describing the

operation of § 1252(a)(2)(A)). Section 1252(a)(2)(A)(i) deprives courts of

jurisdiction to hear a “cause or claim arising from or relating to the implementation

or operation of an order of removal pursuant to section 1225(b)(1),” which plainly

includes Plaintiffs’ collateral attacks on the validity of the expedited removal

orders. See Mendoza-Linares, 51 F.4th at 1155; J.E.F.M. v. Lynch, 837 F.3d 1026,

1031–35 (9th Cir. 2016) (concluding that the “arising from” language in

neighboring § 1252(b)(9) sweeps broadly). And § 1252(a)(2)(A)(iv) deprives

courts of jurisdiction to review “procedures and policies adopted by the Attorney

General to implement the provisions of section 1225(b)(1) of this title,” which

plainly includes Plaintiffs’ claims regarding how Defendants have implemented

2 § 1225(b)(1)(B)(iii)(III). See Mendoza-Linares, 51 F.4th at 1154–55.

Section 1252(a)(2)(A) allows only “limited challenges” as specified in

§ 1252(e). Id. at 1154; see also Guerrier v. Garland, 18 F.4th 304, 308–10

(9th Cir. 2021) (as amended) (describing limited challenges); Alvarado-Herrera v.

Garland, 993 F.3d 1187, 1192 (9th Cir. 2021) (same). Plaintiffs do not argue that

their case falls within any of these limited exceptions to § 1252(a)(2)(A)’s

jurisdiction-stripping language.

The thrust of Plaintiffs’ claims and arguments is that § 1252(a)(2)(A) does

not strip a federal district court of jurisdiction to consider claims that expedited

removal orders suffer from “jurisdictional defects that if properly considered may

[have] potentially rendered the [expedited removal] orders in question a legal

nullity.” Plaintiffs rely on Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, 510 U.S. 200 (1994),

and its progeny, including Axon Enter., Inc. v. Fed. Trade Comm’n, 598 U.S. 175,

186 (2023). In particular, Plaintiffs note that in Axon, the Court held that because

the plaintiffs challenged the agency’s “power to proceed at all, rather than actions

taken in the agency proceedings,” id. at 192, their case was not jurisdictionally

barred, id. at 196. The Thunder Basin line of cases, however, is inapposite because

those cases address only whether Congress has “implicitly” divested district courts

of jurisdiction in a statutory scheme. Axon, 598 U.S. at 185. In this case, Congress

explicitly divested courts of jurisdiction to hear the claims at issue. Accordingly,

3 the district court correctly concluded that it lacked jurisdiction to consider

Plaintiffs’ claims.

AFFIRMED.