Maria Muniz-Muniz v. United States Border Patrol

869 F.3d 442, 2017 FED App. 0195P, 2017 WL 3623951, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 16175
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedAugust 24, 2017
Docket16-3400
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 869 F.3d 442 (Maria Muniz-Muniz v. United States Border Patrol) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Maria Muniz-Muniz v. United States Border Patrol, 869 F.3d 442, 2017 FED App. 0195P, 2017 WL 3623951, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 16175 (6th Cir. 2017).

Opinions

OPINION

KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge.

The Plaintiffs in this case — now only two organizations that represent migrant farm-workers — claim that the United States Border Patrol allows agents at its San-dusky Bay, Ohio station to target persons of Hispanic appearance for questioning. After a bench trial, the district court found that the Plaintiffs had not proved their claim. We affirm.

I.

The Border Patrol’s mission includes enforcing the Nation’s immigration laws, as well as preventing terrorism and combat-ting border-related crimes like human smuggling and sex trafficking. The agency’s Sandusky Bay Station lies near Lake Erie, about an hour west of Cleveland. Agents from Sandusky Bay patrol a roughly 30-mile swath of land along 150 miles of the Ohio shoreline of Lake Erie, including Interstates 80 and 90 and the rest areas there. In the course of their duties, agents often initiate consensual conversations with people they encounter. Sometimes those conversations lead to information that gives an agent probable cause to think that a person is present in the United States illegally, in which case the person is arrested. The Station records all arrests in an “apprehension log,” which includes information about each arrestee’s nationality and specifies whether the Border Patrol or [444]*444some other law-enforcement agency originally approached or stopped the person.

The Plaintiff organizations — the Ohio Immigrant Worker Project and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (collectively, “Plaintiffs”) — brought this lawsuit in 2009, claiming among other things that the Border Patrol’s policy at its Sandusky Bay Station was to allow its agents to target persons of Hispanic appearance when deciding whom to approach during the agents’ patrols. Eventually the district court held a two-week bench trial on that claim,.after which it found that the Plaintiffs had not shown that the Border Patrol had such a policy. The district court therefore entered judgment in favor of the Border Patrol. This appeal followed..

II.

After a bench trial, “we review a district court’s factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo.” Calloway v. Caraco Pharm. Labs., Ltd., 800 F.3d 244, 251 (6th Cir. 2015).

We first engage in some analytical housekeeping, of which there is, plenty to do here. The only remaining defendant is •the United.States Border Patrol, and the Plaintiffs’ only remaining claim is one for injunctive relief. The parties assume, that, for the Plaintiffs to succeed on that claim, they must show, that the Border Patrol itself has a policy that allows agents to use race in some unconstitutional manner. See generally United States v. Avery, 137 F.3d 343, 355 (6th Cir. 1997); Ellis v. District of Columbia, 84 F.3d 1413, 1424 (D.C. Cir. 1996). They further assume that; to show the existence of such a policy, the Plaintiffs must satisfy the standard used in cases brought against municipalities under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs. of N.Y., 436 U.S. 658, 690-91, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). We will likewise assume, without deciding, that the Monell standard applies in determining whether the Plaintiffs can prevail against the Border Patrol here.

Couched in terms of Monell, the Plaintiffs’ argument is that the Border Patrol has a policy that allows agents at its San-dusky Bay Station to use race in a manner that violates the. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection as applied to the federal government. See generally Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 239, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976). That means the Plaintiffs must show two things: first, that the Border Patrol has a policy that allows consideration of race in determining whom to approach; and second, that such a policy is unconstitutional.

We begin and end with the first point. A plaintiff can prove the existence of an agency policy in several ways. One is to show the existence of an “official policy” that expressly permits the conduct at issue. D’Ambrosio v. Marino, 747 F.3d 378, 386 (6th Cir. 2014). The Plaintiffs do not contend that the Border Patrol has any such policy here. (For good reason: the Border Patrol’s official policy expressly “prohibit[s] the consideration of race or ethnicity in [agents’] daily law enforcement activities in all but the most exceptional instances ... • [and only] when a compelling governmental interest is present[.]”) Another way is to show the existence of an informal policy that causes the constitutional violation. To that end a plaintiff can show- that the agency has “a policy of inadequate training or supervision,” which in turn causes agency personnel to act in ways that are unconstitutional, Id. But the Plaintiffs make no such argument here. (Again for good reason: the.Border Patrol trains its agents to follow the official policy described above- and to avoid racial profiling.)

[445]*445That leaves two other ways to show the existence of an informal policy. One is to prove that an agency “official with final decision[-]making authority ratified illegal actions”; another is to prove that the agency has a custom of tolerating violations of federal law. Id. Here the Plaintiffs say they have done both — that they have proof of both ratification and custom, to show that the Border Patrol allows agents at its Sandusky Bay Station to consider race as a factor in determining whom to approach.

As to ratification, the Plaintiffs contend that “[tjestimony by high-ranking supervisors” at Sandusky Bay shows that the Border Patrol maintains a policy of racial profiling there. But Corey Bammer, the Sandusky Station Chief from -2008-12, testified unequivocally that race “cari’t be any basis for a stop whatsoever[.]” He added that “I feel confident that I would be able to see in a report if somebody had used race as a [ ] basis of making a stop;” The current Station Chief at Sandusky Bay, Robert Simon, likewise testified that he would not “tolerate racial profiling [at his] station,” and that Mario Martinez, the Border Patrol’s Sector Chief for the area encompassing Sandusky, “[absolutely” would not tolerate racial profiling “in the Sandusky Bay Station or anywhere in the sector[.]” And Martinez himself testified that he would not “tolerate racial profiling at the stations” in his sector and that he would “know about it if it was going on[.]”

The Plaintiffs elide all this testimony and instead focus upon the testimony of two deputies at Sandusky Bay. One of them, David York, testified that race “could be one of many factors, but it shouldn’t be the sole factor” in deciding whom to approach.

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869 F.3d 442, 2017 FED App. 0195P, 2017 WL 3623951, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 16175, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/maria-muniz-muniz-v-united-states-border-patrol-ca6-2017.