LEOBARDO MORENO GALVEZ, ET AL V. UR JADDOU, ET AL, No. 20-36052 (9th Cir. 2022)
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The Special Immigrant Juveniles (“SIJ”) program provides certain immigrant juveniles a pathway to lawful permanent residence status. Under 8 U.S.C. Section 1232(d)(2), applications for SIJ status “shall be adjudicated” not later than 180 days after they are filed. Plaintiffs—three SIJ petitioners representing a certified class of some current and future SIJ petitioners from Washington State—filed suit in the district court against USCIS and other federal government defendants (the “Government”). The district court held that USCIS’s delays were unlawful, and the Government did not challenge that holding on appeal. At issue on appeal was only whether the district court erred, after granting summary judgment to Plaintiffs, by issuing a permanent injunction and in crafting its terms and scope.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s issuance of a permanent injunction, vacated a provision of the injunction that permits SIJ petitioners (but not USCIS) to “toll” the deadline for adjudicating SIJ petitions, and remanded. The panel explained that there is an inconsistency between the reach of the jurisdictional bar as it appears in the provision that enacted it, as opposed to how it appears as codified in the United States Code.
The panel concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in entering the permanent injunction. The panel rejected the Government’s claims that the district court failed to consider the operational hardship on the Government in balancing hardships, and that the district court relied upon stale evidence to determine that Plaintiffs were likely to suffer irreparable harm.
Court Description: Immigration In a case in which Plaintiffs challenged delays by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) in adjudicating petitions for Special Immigrant Juveniles (“SIJ”) status, the panel affirmed the district court’s issuance of a permanent injunction, vacated a provision of the injunction that permits SIJ petitioners (but not USCIS) to “toll” the deadline for adjudicating SIJ petitions, and remanded. The SIJ program provides certain immigrant juveniles a pathway to lawful permanent residence status. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1232(d)(2), applications for SIJ status “shall be adjudicated” not later than 180 days after they are filed. Plaintiffs—three SIJ petitioners representing a certified class of some current and future SIJ petitioners from Washington State—filed suit in the district court against USCIS and other federal government defendants (the “Government”). The district court held that USCIS’s delays were unlawful, and the Government did not challenge that holding on appeal. At issue on appeal was only whether the district court erred, after granting summary judgment to Plaintiffs, by issuing a permanent injunction and in crafting its terms and scope. The panel first addressed whether the district court exceeded its jurisdiction in enjoining the Government to comply with 8 U.S.C. § 1232(d)(2) in light of Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, 142 S. Ct. 2057 (2022). In Aleman Gonzalez, the Supreme Court held that the jurisdictional bar of 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1) generally prohibits ** The Honorable Christina Reiss, United States District Judge for the District of Vermont, sitting by designation. lower courts from entering injunctions that order federal officials to take or to refrain from taking actions to enforce, implement, or otherwise carry out the statutory provisions specified in that law. However, the panel explained that there is inconsistency between the reach of the jurisdictional bar as it appears in the provision that enacted it, as opposed to how it appears as codified in the United States Code. The panel further explained that the text of the United States Code cannot prevail over the Statutes at Large when the two are inconsistent. Thus, the panel the panel held—as the parties had agreed—that the jurisdictional bar of § 242(f)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1), does not apply to an order that enjoins or restrains the operation of the law at issue here, § 235(d)(2) of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1232(d)(2). The panel therefore held that the district court had jurisdiction to enter the injunction. Next, the panel concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in entering the permanent injunction. The panel rejected the Government’s claims that the district court failed to consider the operational hardship on the Government in balancing hardships, and that the district court relied upon stale evidence to determine that Plaintiffs were likely to suffer irreparable harm. As to the scope of the injunction, the Government first argued that the district court abused its discretion in strictly imposing the 180-day timeline without tolling for requests for evidence and notices of intent to deny or other unique circumstances because the injunction prejudices agency activities of higher or competing priority as well as SIJ petitioners from the other 49 states. The panel found no abuse of discretion in this respect but explained that its holding was limited to the record before it, stressing that it did not hold that the district court’s order should stand no matter the circumstances. Next, the Government challenged the provision of the permanent injunction that allows SIJ petitioners—but not USCIS—to toll the statutory deadline. The panel held that the district court abused its discretion because the record did not support the reasonableness of an order that broadly permits each and every SIJ petitioner to “toll” indefinitely Congress’s timeline for adjudicating SIJ petitions, without apparent consideration of existing regulations, without an affirmative showing of good cause specific to each class member’s claim for tolling, when the district court held USCIS strictly accountable to the statutory deadline, and where 8 U.S.C. § 1232(d)(2) plainly provides no mechanism for “tolling.” On remand, the panel instructed that the district court may consider amending its injunction to allow tolling on a case-by-case basis, upon an affirmative showing of good cause, subject to a definite limitation on the tolling duration. Dissenting in part, Judge Graber wrote she concurred in the majority’s opinion with one exception: she emphatically disagreed with the majority’s conclusion that it was unreasonable to allow for the extension of the 180-day deadline if the beneficiary of the deadline—the child—asked for more time. Judge Graber wrote that the injunction violated no law, disagreeing with the majority’s conclusion that, if USICIS must comply with the applicable deadline, so too must the applicants. Observing that the majority recognized that any SIJ applicant is entitled to toll the deadline for good cause, Judge Graber wrote that the majority failed to explain why, considering the whole context of this case—in which Plaintiffs sought judicial relief because of the agency’s own undue delay—the inclusion of a provision that any applicant is entitled to toll the 180 days simply upon request constituted an abuse of discretion.
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