JOHN DOE v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General; ALEJANDRO N. MAYORKAS; TAE JOHNSON, in his official capacity, Acting Director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; POLLY KAISER, in her official capacity, Acting Director for the San Francisco ICE Field Office; MOISES BECERRA
No. 23-15361
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
July 29, 2024
KANE, District Judge
D.C. No. 3:22-cv-03759-JD
FOR PUBLICATION
James Donato, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted May 16, 2024
San Francisco, California
Filed July 29, 2024
Before: Kenneth K. Lee and Daniel A.
Opinion by Judge Kane
SUMMARY**
Habeas/Immigration
The panel reversed the district court‘s denial of Respondents’ motion to dismiss and remanded to the district court with instructions to vacate the grant of the habeas petition filed by John Doe, a detained alien.
Doe brought his habeas petition pursuant to
The panel held that the district court erred in exercising jurisdiction over Doe‘s habeas petition because Doe failed to name his immediate custodian as respondent and filed the petition outside the district of his confinement. The panel explained that, under Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426 (2004), when a
Addressing the principal question of whether Padilla‘s rules for core habeas petitions applied to Doe, the panel concluded that Doe‘s petition was a core habeas petition. The panel explained that Doe sought typical habeas relief in asking for his release should Respondents fail to provide him with a bond hearing.
Next, the panel concluded that Doe failed to name the proper respondent to his core habeas petition because he did not name his immediate custodian, the Facility Administrator (and de facto warden) of the GSA. The panel also concluded that Doe failed to file his petition in the proper judicial district because he was confined at the GSA in the Eastern District of California, but filed his petition in the Northern District of California.
COUNSEL
Jordan Wells (argued), Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco, California, for Petitioner-Appellee.
Shiwon Choe (argued) and Savith Iyengar, Assistant United States Attorneys; Michelle Lo, Civil Division Chief; Ismail J. Ramsey, United States Attorney; United States Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorney, San Francisco, California; Courtney E. Moran and Erin T. Ryan, Trial Attorneys; William C. Peachey, Director; Brian M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General; United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, Office of Immigration Litigation, Washington, D.C.; for Respondents-Appellants.
Marc Van Der Hout and Johnny Sinodis, Van Der Hout LLP, San Francisco, California; Trina A. Realmuto, Kristin Macleod-Ball, and Aidan Langston, National Immigration Litigation Alliance, Brookline, Massachusetts; for Amici Curiae The National Immigration Litigation Alliance, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Immigrant Legal Defense, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus.
Michelle (Minju) Y. Cho, and Bree Bernwanger, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California, San Francisco, California, for Amici Curiae American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, The American Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, and Pangea Legal Services.
OPINION
KANE, District Judge:
John Doe (“Doe“), an alien detained pursuant to
We therefore REVERSE the district court‘s denial of Respondents’ motion to dismiss and REMAND this case to the district court with instructions to VACATE the grant of Doe‘s petition for writ of habeas corpus.
I. Background
On July 12, 2021, Doe began his detention at GSA pursuant to
Respondents moved to dismiss Doe‘s petition, challenging jurisdiction in the Northern District of California. The district court denied Respondents’ motion in a summary order, holding that “[t]he Court has concluded in prior immigration habeas cases that the Northern District of California is an appropriate jurisdiction for petitions filed
by aliens detained by the Director of the San Francisco ICE Field
II. Standard of Review
This court has jurisdiction over the district court‘s decision denying Respondents’ motion to dismiss and granting Doe‘s habeas petition pursuant to
III. Analysis
A. Rules Governing § 2241 Petitions
Doe filed his habeas petition in the Northern District of California pursuant to
[w]rits of habeas corpus may be granted by the Supreme Court, any justice thereof, the district courts and any circuit judge within their respective jurisdictions. The order of a
circuit judge shall be entered in the records of the district court of the district wherein the restraint complained of is had.
The seminal case interpreting and clarifying the jurisdictional bounds of
In finding that the district court in the Southern District of New York did not have jurisdiction over Padilla‘s petition, the Supreme Court highlighted several important
rules. First, the Court noted that in the federal habeas statute,
The Padilla district of confinement and immediate custodian rules are firmly entrenched in the law of this and other circuits. See Lopez-Marroquin v. Barr, 955 F.3d 759, 760 (9th Cir. 2020) (applying the district of confinement rule to a
custodian rule in rejecting the naming of the ICE Field Office Director as the proper respondent to a habeas petition); Anariba v. Dir. Hudson Cnty. Corr. Ctr., 17 F.4th 434, 444-45 (3d Cir. 2021) (applying the district of confinement and immediate custodian rules to a core habeas petition challenging immigration detention).3
These rules are the basis for Respondents’ challenge to jurisdiction in the Northern District of California. Respondents argued below that Doe should have named the warden of GSA, his immediate custodian, as respondent to his habeas petition. Respondents further argued that Doe filed his petition outside of the district where he was confined, thus rendering the Northern District of California‘s exercise of jurisdiction improper.
The district court denied Respondents’ motion, noting in its summary order that “[t]he Court has concluded in prior immigration habeas cases that the Northern District of California is an appropriate jurisdiction for petitions filed by aliens detained by the Director of the San Francisco ICE Field Office.”4 On appeal, Respondents renew their
argument
B. Doe‘s Petition is a Core Habeas Petition
In addressing the principal question of whether Padilla‘s rules for core habeas petitions apply to Doe, we turn first to the language of Doe‘s habeas petition, which requests:
that this Court issue a writ of habeas corpus and order his release within fourteen days unless Respondents schedule a hearing before an immigration judge where: (1) to continue detention, the government must establish by clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Doe presents a risk of flight or danger; and (2) if the government cannot meet its burden, the immigration judge orders Mr. Doe‘s release on appropriate conditions
(declining to exercise jurisdiction over a habeas petition from a GSA detainee), and Alfaro-Ramirez v. Current or Acting Field Off. Dir., San Francisco Field Off., No. 24-cv-00817, 2024 WL 1861011 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 29, 2024) (same).
of supervision, taking into account his ability to pay a bond.
From the plain text of Doe‘s petition, he seeks a writ of habeas corpus and release order from the district court unless Respondents provide him a bond hearing before an immigration judge. Absent his requested bond hearing, Doe‘s petition requests that the district court “order his release within fourteen days.”
Yet, although maintaining that his petition is a proper
Doe‘s argument is counterintuitive and against the great weight of Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit authority. First, the conditional nature of the requested relief does not drive our analysis. This court has acknowledged that “[i]n modern practice . . . courts employ a conditional order of release in appropriate circumstances, which orders the State to release the petitioner unless the State takes some remedial action, such as to retry (or resentence) the petitioner.” Harvest v. Castro, 531 F.3d 737, 741–42 (9th Cir. 2008). The Supreme Court made a similar point in Herrera v. Collins, stating that the “typical relief granted in federal habeas corpus is a conditional order of release.” 506 U.S. 390, 403 (1993). Accordingly, Doe seeks “typical habeas relief” in asking for his release should Respondents fail to provide him with an individualized bond hearing. Id.
Doe relies primarily on Pinson and Nettles for the proposition that, because he did not challenge the underlying legal basis for his detention, but rather sought a process remedy in the form of a bond hearing, it follows that his petition falls within the “core of habeas” as defined in Pinson but pursues non-core habeas relief as discussed in Padilla. We are unpersuaded that either of those cases support such a conclusion.
Nettles and Pinson addressed the different question of whether claims were cognizable in habeas at all. In Nettles, an inmate pursued habeas relief following disciplinary segregation and the loss of good time credit. See Nettles, 830 F.3d at 926. The petitioner sought to expunge a rules violation report and restore the good time credit, and this court accordingly found that his claims “would not necessarily lead to immediate or speedier release because the expungement of the challenged disciplinary violation would not necessarily lead to a grant of parole.” Id. at 927, 934–
35. Accordingly, the court determined that the petitioner‘s claim was not cognizable in habeas. See id. at 935.
Pinson solidified the rule that a habeas claim is one challenging the fact of confinement, rather than the conditions of confinement. In Pinson, two inmates sought habeas relief, arguing that the conditions of their incarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic violated the Eighth Amendment. Pinson, 69 F.4th at 1062. This court rejected claimant Sands‘s argument that only habeas relief could ameliorate the harm inflicted on him by the government‘s ongoing failure to sufficiently treat his underlying illnesses and protect him from exposure to the coronavirus. Id. at 1063, 1065–66, 1075. In so doing, this court affirmed the district court‘s dismissal of claimant Sands‘s habeas petition for lack of jurisdiction, delineating that “the relevant question is whether, based on the allegations in the petition, release is legally required irrespective of the relief requested.” Id. at 1072, 1076. In dismissing the petition, this court concluded that claimant Sands appeared to challenge only the conditions of his confinement and not the underlying legal basis for that confinement, and therefore his claim was “outside the core of habeas.” Id. at 1073. Pinson thus did the opposite of what Doe asks for here: it dismissed his petition altogether. Id. at 1076.
Neither Pinson nor Nettles suggest that Doe‘s petition is a non-core habeas petition under Padilla. To the contrary, the text of Doe‘s petition indicates that his petition pursues habeas relief and is an attack on his present physical confinement at GSA, not a future restraint on his freedom. Accordingly, Doe‘s petition falls within Pinson‘s “core of habeas” (as a cognizable habeas petition) and is also a core habeas petition under Padilla (as challenging his present
physical confinement). We next examine whether Doe named the proper respondent to his core habeas petition, as well as whether he filed his petition in the proper judicial district.
C. The District Court Erred in Exercising Jurisdiction Over Doe‘s Petition.
1. Doe Failed to Name His Immediate Custodian, the Facility Administrator and De Facto Warden of GSA, as Respondent.
Upon initiating his core habeas petition in the Northern District of California, Doe failed to name the Facility Administrator of GSA as Respondent. For the reasons that follow, Doe‘s failure to name the Facility
“[O]ur inquiry begins with the statutory text, and ends there as well if the text is unambiguous.” BedRoc Ltd., LLC v. United States, 541 U.S. 176, 183 (2004). Section 2241 of Title 28 of the United States Code is followed by the implementing provision, Section 2242. Section 2242 states that habeas petitions “shall allege the facts concerning the applicant‘s commitment or detention, the name of the person who has custody over him and by virtue of what claim or authority, if known.”
“[t]he writ, or order to show cause shall be directed to the person having custody of the person detained.”
Footnote eight in Padilla does not affect the application of the immediate custodian rule for core habeas petitions filed by immigrant detainees. Doe argues that footnote eight hints that the immediate custodian rule may not apply to alien detainees because the Court left open the question of “whether the Attorney General is a proper respondent to a habeas petition filed by an alien detained pending deportation.” Footnote eight cites six cases addressing the question of the proper respondent to an immigrant‘s habeas petition. Those cases, decided prior to the 2005 enactment of the REAL ID Act, were analyzed under a statutory scheme that allowed orders of removal to be challenged through habeas petitions. See Singh v. Gonzales, 499 F.3d 969, 971 (9th Cir. 2007). All but one held that the Attorney General was not a proper respondent. See Padilla, 542 U.S. at 435
n.8.5 Armentero v. Immigration and Naturalization Services—the only case holding that the Attorney General was a proper respondent—was subsequently withdrawn. See Armentero v. I.N.S., 340 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2003), reh‘g granted, opinion withdrawn, 382 F.3d 1153 (9th Cir. 2004), opinion after grant of reh‘g, 412 F.3d 1088 (9th Cir. 2005). Other than Armentero, the cases cited in footnote eight “were challenges to removal/deportation
Doe‘s alternative argument is equally without support. Doe asserts that in naming the officials that he did, namely the Field Office Director of ICE, he has functionally named his immediate custodian because the Field Office Director retains the ultimate supervisory authority over detainees at the GSA. But for core habeas petitions, Padilla expressly “reaffirm[ed] that the immediate custodian, not a supervisory official who exercises legal control, is the proper respondent.” 542 U.S. at 440; see also id. at 440 n.13 (“[T]he proper respondent is the person responsible for
maintaining—not authorizing—the custody of the prisoner.“).
Doe further asserts that “where the custodian boards their prisoners at a contract facility, the proper respondent to a habeas petition challenging such detention is the custodian imposing the detention, not the custodian‘s mere agent in carrying it out.” Doe cites Fest v. Bartee and Dunne v. Henman, two pre-Padilla opinions by this court, in arguing that the private contract warden is not Doe‘s immediate custodian and that Doe named his true immediate custodian, the ICE Field Office Director, as respondent.
Fest and Dunne are inapposite for several reasons. As an initial matter, both cases were decided years before the Supreme Court‘s decision in Rumsfeld v. Padilla. To the extent that Fest and Dunne conflict with Padilla, Padilla controls. See Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 893 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc) (holding that “where the reasoning or theory of our prior circuit authority is clearly irreconcilable with the reasoning or theory of intervening higher authority, a three-judge panel should consider itself bound by the later and controlling authority“).
Moreover, neither Fest nor Dunne direct us to reject the rules governing
private contract wardens are named as respondents, the government can and has stepped in to defend its interest in keeping petitioners detained. See
Dunne is equally unavailing because the petitioner filed his
Finally, Doe relies on Roman v. Ashcroft, 340 F.3d 314 (6th Cir. 2003), a Sixth Circuit case cited in Padilla footnote eight, to support his position that the Field Office Director of ICE could properly be named as respondent. In Roman, the Sixth Circuit held that “a detained alien filing a habeas
corpus petition should generally name as a respondent the person exercising daily control over his affairs” and that the INS District Director could be a proper respondent, because that official “has power over” the alien habeas petitioner. 340 F.3d at 320. However, under an earlier, pre-REAL ID Act statutory scheme, the petitioner in Roman challenged a removal order by an immigration judge, as well as the immigration judge‘s finding that he was statutorily ineligible for discretionary relief pursuant to
Doe‘s practical arguments fare no better. His suggestion that the warden of GSA could not produce Doe before a judicial tribunal finds no support in the record. Moreover, this circuit and others have held that state and private contract wardens retain the ability to produce habeas petitioners in courts of law. See Brittingham v. United States, 982 F.2d 378, 379 (9th Cir. 1992) (holding that the warden of a California state prison was the proper respondent to federal habeas petition); see also Anariba, 17 F.4th at 445-46 (requiring an ICE detainee to “adhere to the immediate custodian rule” in filing his habeas petition); Kholyavskiy, 443 F.3d at 953 (holding that petitioner‘s decision to name the Chicago ICE Field Office Director and not the state prison warden as respondent to his habeas petition was a jurisdictional defect); Stokes, 374 F.3d at 1239 (private contract warden was proper respondent). Doe points to no appellate authority requiring that the respondent to a federal habeas petition be a federal official, and we find none.
Padilla set forth a clear rule requiring core habeas petitioners challenging their present physical confinement to name their immediate custodian, the warden of the facility where they are detained, as the respondent to their petition. Padilla, 542 U.S. at 435. Doe did not adhere to this requirement in failing to name the Facility Administrator, who was the de facto warden of GSA, in his petition. Accordingly, the district court erred in exercising jurisdiction over Doe‘s petition.
2. Doe filed his petition outside of the district of confinement.
The district court‘s exercise of jurisdiction was also improper because Doe was confined in the Eastern District of California, not the Northern District of California, where his petition was filed.
The plain language of
Congress has also legislated against the background of the “district of confinement”
rule by fashioning explicit exceptions to the rule in certain circumstances. For instance,
§ 2241(d) provides that when a petitioner is serving a state criminal sentence in a State that contains more than one federal district, he may file a habeas petition not only “in the district court for the district wherein he is in custody,” but also “in the district court for the district within which the State court was held which convicted and sentenced him“; and “each of such district courts shall have concurrent jurisdiction to entertain the application.” Similarly, until Congress directed federal criminal prisoners to file certain postconviction petitions in the sentencing courts by adding§ 2255 to the habeas statute, federal prisoners could litigate such collateral attacks only in the district of confinement. Both of these provisions would have been unnecessary if . . .§ 2241 ‘s general habeas provisions permit a prisoner to file outside the district of confinement.
Padilla, 542 U.S. at 443 (cleaned up). All told, “[t]he plain language of the habeas statute thus confirms the general rule that for core habeas petitions challenging present physical confinement, jurisdiction lies in only one district: the district of confinement.” Id. And this court in Lopez-Marroquin v. Barr affirmed the application of the district of confinement rule to a
In arguing that the Northern District of California could exercise jurisdiction over his habeas petition, Doe primarily relies on the Supreme Court‘s decision in Rasul v. Bush. In Rasul, the Supreme Court cited Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky, for the premise that in interpreting the “within their respective jurisdictions” language of
this Court held . . . that the prisoner‘s presence within the territorial jurisdiction of the district court is not ‘an invariable prerequisite’ to the exercise of district court jurisdiction under the federal habeas statute. Rather, because ‘the writ of habeas corpus does not act upon the prisoner who seeks relief, but upon the person who holds him in what is alleged to be unlawful custody,’ a district court acts ‘within [its] respective jurisdiction’ within the meaning of
§ 2241 as long as the custodian can be reached by service of process.
Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466, 478–79 (2004) (citing Braden, 410 U.S. 484, 494–95 (1973)). It follows, according to Doe, that the Field Office Director is Doe‘s custodian, the Field Office Director operates out of the Northern District of California, and thus the district court properly exercised jurisdiction since the Field Office Director can be reached by service of process in the Northern District of California.
Rasul does not alter the general rule that core habeas petitions must be filed in the district of confinement. Rasul addressed “whether the habeas statute confers a right to judicial review of the legality of executive detention of
aliens in a territory over which the United States exercises plenary and exclusive jurisdiction, but not ‘ultimate sovereignty.‘” Rasul, 542 U.S. at 475. In other words, Rasul presented an issue wholly different from Padilla and the instant case—examining the unique circumstances of detainees at Guantanamo Naval Base, for which there is no judicial district. See Gherebi v. Bush, 374 F.3d 727, 739 (9th Cir. 2004) (discussing how Rasul applied an exception to the immediate custodian and district of confinement rules in the case of detainees at Guantanamo Bay). Accordingly, Rasul does not help Doe.
Doe‘s remaining arguments emphasize the prudential concerns associated with forcing GSA detainees to file habeas petitions in the Eastern District of California. Doe highlights the high caseloads and understaffing issues in that district, which he suggests will inevitably lead to delays in habeas petitioners obtaining judicial review or a possible remedy. But here,
district court erred in exercising jurisdiction over Doe‘s petition due to his failure to file in the district of confinement.
IV. CONCLUSION
Today we affirm the application of the immediate custodian and district of confinement rules to core habeas petitions filed pursuant to