Alvarez v. Sessions

338 F. Supp. 3d 1042
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedAugust 31, 2018
DocketCase No. 5:18-cv-05208-EJD
StatusPublished
Cited by20 cases

This text of 338 F. Supp. 3d 1042 (Alvarez v. Sessions) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Alvarez v. Sessions, 338 F. Supp. 3d 1042 (N.D. Cal. 2018).

Opinion

Judicial review of all questions of law and fact, including interpretation and application of constitutional and statutory provisions, arising from any action taken or proceeding brought to remove an alien from the United States under this subchapter shall be available only in judicial review of a final order under this section. Except as otherwise provided in this section, no court shall have jurisdiction, by habeas corpus under section 2241 of Title 28 or any other habeas corpus provision, by section 1361 or 1651 of such title, or by any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), to review such an order or such questions of law or fact.

The Ninth Circuit, in accord with another circuit's observation, has described § 1252(b)(9) as "breathtaking" because it "swallows up virtually all claims that tied to removal proceedings." J.E.F.M., 837 F.3d at 1031 (quoting Aguilar v. ICE, 510 F.3d 1, 9 (1st Cir. 2007) ). The provision is a "zipper clause" which consolidates all judicial review of immigration proceedings into one action in the court of appeals. Id. (citing St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 313 & n.37, 121 S.Ct. 2271 ). Thus, "[t]aken together, § 1252(a)(5) and § 1252(b)(9) mean that any issue - whether legal or factual - arising from any removal-related activity can be reviewed only through the PFR process."

*1047Id. (emphasis in original). This channeling of claims to the appellate courts includes process and practices challenges which "arise from" removal proceedings. Id. at 1035.

C. J.E.F.M.

Against this statutory backdrop, the Ninth Circuit decided J.E.F.M. in 2016.4

There, immigrant minors placed in removal proceedings brought a class action complaint in district court asserting violations of their Fifth Amendment due process right to counsel and their statutory right to appointed counsel at government expense in immigration proceedings. The minors could not afford attorneys and had not obtained pro bono counsel for removal proceedings, yet were being compelled "to appear unrepresented in complex, adversarial court proceedings against trained [government] attorneys" for which they lacked the emotional and intellectual capacity to raise a right-to-counsel challenge. The minors alleged that if forced to wait and bring right-to-counsel claims through the PFR process, "they would be denied meaningful judicial review of their right-to-counsel claims if the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case." The district court granted in part and denied in part the Government's motion to dismiss the minors' complaint, holding it lacked jurisdiction over the statutory right-to-counsel claim but retained jurisdiction over the constitutional claim as a matter collateral to removal proceedings. The minors and the Government each filed interlocutory appeals, the former from the dismissal of the statutory claim and the latter from the denial of the motion to dismiss the constitutional claim.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the statutory claim but reversed the denial of the motion to dismiss the constitutional claim, ultimately holding the district court had no jurisdiction over either claim. Id. at 1038-39. The court reasoned, after examining the history of the INA's jurisdictional sections and its 1996 and 2005 amendments, that the minors' right-to-counsel claims "must be raised through the PFR process because they 'arise from' removal proceedings." Id. at 1032-33. In addition, the court reasoned the minors' claims were neither ancillary to nor independent of the removal proceedings; "[r]ather, these claims are bound up in and an inextricable part of the administrative process. Id. at 1033.5 More specifically, the court found "that Congress intended to channel all claims arising from removal proceedings, including right-to-counsel *1048claims, to the federal courts of appeals and bypass the district courts." Id.

D. Application to the Instant Action

J.E.F.M. is indistinguishable from this case in the aspects critical to determining the court's jurisdiction. The J.E.F.M. court's interpretation of § 1252(a)(5) and § 1252(b)(9) therefore governs the outcome here.

Much like the minors did in J.E.F.M., Petitioners' frame their single claim as implicating their Fifth Amendment due process right to counsel.6 Petitioners allege:

Petitioners' pro bono counsel cannot continue to represent their clients in jurisdictions beyond San Francisco. None of the Petitioners have financial means to retain private attorneys in Colorado or Washington. There are few, if any, meaningful opportunities to secure pro bono representation in Tacoma, Washington or Aurora, Colorado. Petitioners will be unrepresented if their proceedings are transferred outside San Francisco.
These transfers violate Petitioners' right to counsel by destroying their established relationship with their attorney, leaving them alone to navigate the byzantine immigration laws while detained....

Pet., Dkt. No. 1, at ¶¶ 4-5.

J.E.F.M. teaches, however, that Petitioners' challenge based on the potential loss of counsel "arises from" their removal proceedings and can only be raised through the PFR process, as required by § 1252(a)(5) and § 1252(b)(9). See J.E.F.M., 837 F.3d at 1032-33. This makes sense when examined along with Congress' intent in enacting the REAL ID Act; unlike issues truly collateral or ancillary to a removal proceeding, claims based on violations of the right to counsel during a removal proceeding are "zipped up" for review into one action by § 1252(b)(9) and eventually channeled to the court of appeals through the PFR process. Id. at 1031.

Distinctions between the minors' claims in

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Bluebook (online)
338 F. Supp. 3d 1042, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/alvarez-v-sessions-cand-2018.