E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr

391 F. Supp. 3d 974
District Court, N.D. California·Decided September 9, 2019·No. Case No. 19-cv-04073-JST·Published·Cited by 11 cases

Opinion

ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO RESTORE NATIONWIDE SCOPE OF INJUNCTION

Re: ECF No. 57

JON S. TIGAR, United States District Judge *976Now before the Court is Plaintiffs' motion "to consider supplemental evidence and restore the nationwide scope of injunction." ECF No. 57. For the reasons set forth below, the Court will grant the motion.

I. BACKGROUND

The factual background to this case is discussed at length in the Court's preliminary injunction order, and the Court will not repeat those details here except as necessary to explain its ruling on the present motion.

On July 16, 2019, the Department of Justice ("DOJ") and the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") published a joint interim final rule, entitled "Asylum Eligibility and Procedural Modifications" (the "Rule" or the "third country transit bar"). The effect of the Rule is to categorically deny asylum to almost anyone entering the United States at the southern border if he or she did not first apply for asylum in Mexico or another third country.

Plaintiffs in this case - East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, Al Otro Lado, Innovation Law Lab, and Central American Resource Center (the "Organizations") - are legal and social service organizations that provide assistance, advocacy, and legal services to undocumented persons. On July 17, 2019, the Organizations filed a motion for temporary restraining order to prevent the Rule from taking effect. ECF No. 3. By consent of the parties, the motion was converted to one for preliminary injunction, which the Court granted on July 24, 2019. ECF No. 42. The injunction prevented the Defendants1 "from taking any action continuing to implement the Rule" and ordered them "to return to the pre-Rule practices for processing asylum applications." E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr ("East Bay IV") , 385 F. Supp. 3d 922, 960 (N.D. Cal. 2019).2 Among other *977things, the Court found that "the Organizations [had] ... established a sufficient likelihood of irreparable harm through 'diversion of resources and the non-speculative loss of substantial funding from other sources.' " Id. at 957-58 (quoting E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Trump ("East Bay III "), 354 F. Supp. 3d 1094, 1116 (N.D. Cal. 2018)).

Defendants appealed that order to the Ninth Circuit and moved for a stay pending appeal. The Ninth Circuit denied the motion for stay pending appeal, but only "insofar as the injunction applies within the Ninth Circuit." E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr ("East Bay V "), 934 F.3d 1027, 1028, 2019 WL 3850928, at *1 (9th Cir. 2019). The court "grant[ed] the motion for stay pending appeal insofar as the injunction applies outside the Ninth Circuit, because the nationwide scope of the injunction is not supported by the record as it stands." Id. The Ninth Court also ordered that this Court "retains jurisdiction to further develop the record in support of a preliminary injunction extending beyond the Ninth Circuit." Id. at 1031, at *3. That court did not disturb this Court's prior findings regarding the nature of the harms the Organizations were likely to suffer if the Rule were given effect.

The Organizations then filed this motion "to consider supplemental evidence and restore the nationwide scope of injunction," ECF No. 57, as well as a supplemental brief ordered by the Court, ECF No. 63. The Government filed an opposition, ECF Nos. 65, 66, and the Organizations filed a reply, ECF No. 67.3

After the Organizations filed their motion, but before the Government filed its opposition, three of the defendants - EOIR, USCIS, and ICE - issued guidance regarding the implementation of the Court's injunction as modified by the Ninth Circuit's stay order. The guidance requires employees of those agencies to treat individuals as covered by the injunction if: "(1) the alien was apprehended in the Ninth Circuit, (2) the alien is detained in the Ninth Circuit, or (3) the interview or adjudication itself occurs in the Ninth Circuit." ECF No. 65-1 (EOIR Guidance) at 1; see also ECF No. 65-2 (USCIS Guidance) at 1 ("the IFR should not apply to any [credible fear] determination or asylum adjudication in which: (1) the alien was apprehended in the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit ... (2) the alien is detained in the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit; or (3) the interview itself occurs in the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit"); ECF No. 65-3 (ICE Guidance) at 1 (ICE "will consider the PI to apply in situations where the alien: (i) was initially apprehended by DHS within the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit; (ii) is detained within the Ninth Circuit at the time of adjudication of the asylum application; or (iii) was initially located outside the Ninth Circuit but whose asylum application is subsequently adjudicated within the Ninth Circuit").

The Court conducted a hearing on the motion on September 5, 2019.

II. JURISDICTION

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E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr, 391 F. Supp. 3d 974 (N.D. Cal. 2019).

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