Omar Flores v. Godfrey, No. 18-35460 (9th Cir. 2020)
Annotate this Case
Plaintiffs, representatives of a certified class of aliens with final removal orders who are placed in withholding-only removal proceedings and who are detained pursuant to 8 U.S.C. 1231(a)(6) in the Western District of Washington, filed suit challenging their detention.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment and permanent injunction insofar as they conform to its construction of section 1231(a)(6) in Diouf v. Napolitano. The panel also affirmed insofar as the judgment and permanent injunction require the Government to the satisfy the constitutional burden of proof it identified in Singh v. Holder.
However, unlike Aleman Gonzalez v. Barr, decided on the same day, this appeal presented the panel with a different question regarding its construction of section 1231(a)(6). The panel held that the district court erroneously imposed the requirement that the Government provide class members with additional bond hearings as a statutory matter, because the panel did not construe section 1231(a)(6) as requiring this in Diouf II, nor does it find any support for this requirement. Therefore, the panel reversed in part, and vacated the judgment and permanent injunction, remanding for further proceedings.
Court Description: Immigration. In an action where Plaintiffs—who represent a certified class of aliens with final removal orders who are placed in withholding-only removal proceedings, and who are detained pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(6) in the Western District of Washington—challenged their detention, the panel: 1) affirmed the district court’s judgment and permanent injunction insofar as they require the Government to provide each class member detained for six months or longer with a bond hearing before an immigration judge where the burden is on the Government to justify continued detention; 2) reversed and vacated with respect to the requirement that the Government provide class members with additional bond hearings every six months; and 3) reversed and vacated the partial judgment for the Government on Plaintiffs’ due process claims, and remanded. The district court granted partial summary judgment for Plaintiffs and the class on their statutory claims and, for that reason, granted partial summary judgment for the Government on Plaintiffs’ due process claims. The court’s permanent injunction requires three things: 1) based on Diouf v. Napolitano, 634 F.3d 1081 (9th Cir. 2011) (Diouf II), the Government must provide a class member detained for six months or longer with a bond hearing before an IJ when the class member’s release or removal is not imminent; 4 FLORES TEJADA V. GODFREY 2) based on Singh v. Holder, 638 F.3d 1196 (9th Cir. 2011), the Government must justify a class member’s continued detention by clear and convincing evidence showing that the alien is a flight risk or a danger to the community; and 3) the Government must provide a class member who remains detained after an initial bond hearing at six months with additional bond hearings every six months thereafter. The panel explained that this appeal presented the same core question the panel addressed the same day in Aleman Gonzalez v. Barr, No. 18-16465: whether the court’s construction in Diouf II survives the Supreme Court’s decision in Jennings v. Rodriguez, 138 S. Ct. 830 (2018). The panel reiterated its conclusions from Aleman-Gonzalez that applied equally here: 1) Diouf II’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) to require an individualized bond hearing for an alien subject to prolonged detention is not clearly irreconcilable with Jennings; 2) Jennings does not abrogate the court’s constitutional due process holding in Singh regarding the applicable burden of proof; and 3) the district court did not improperly re-apply the canon of constitutional avoidance to § 1231(a)(6) in contravention of Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), or violate Clark v. Martinez, 543 U.S. 371 (2005). However, the panel concluded that the district court erred by requiring the Government to provide class members with additional statutory bond hearings every six months. The panel explained that the district court could not rely on Diouf II to sustain that requirement because, in that case, the court applied the canon of constitutional avoidance to construe § 1231(a)(6) as requiring an individualized bond hearing; it did not apply the canon to read an additional bond hearings requirement into the statute. Further, the panel concluded that this court’s decision in Robbins v. Rodriguez, FLORES TEJADA V. GODFREY 5 804 F.3d 1060 (9th Cir. 2015) (Rodriguez III), which required periodic bond hearings every six months for aliens detained under other immigration detention statutes, could not support the additional bond hearing requirements imposed by the district court given the Supreme Court’s reversal of Rodriguez III in Jennings. Noting that Jennings did not address an additional bond hearing requirement in the context of § 1231(a)(6), the panel nonetheless found its reasoning persuasive. In Jennings, the Supreme Court made clear that Zadvydas’s construction of § 1231(a)(6) to identify six months as a presumptively reasonable length of detention was already “a notably generous application of the constitutional-avoidance canon.” Although Diouf II’s six-month bond hearing construction coincides with Zadvydas’s six-month period, the panel found no support in either Zadvydas’s reading of § 1231(a)(6) or the statutory text to construe the provision as requiring additional bond hearings. Accordingly, the panel reversed and vacated the judgment and permanent injunction for Plaintiffs in this regard. In doing so, the panel also reversed and vacated partial judgment for the Government on Plaintiffs’ due process claims. The panel explained that, because the district court found in favor of Plaintiffs on their statutory claims, the district court effectively treated Plaintiffs’ due process claims as moot. Observing that that is no longer the case given the panel’s decision, the panel remanded for the district court to consider Plaintiffs’ constitutional claims. Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Judge Fernandez wrote that he would vacate the district court’s judgment and permanent injunction entirely. Therefore, Judge Fernandez concurred in the majority opinion to the 6 FLORES TEJADA V. GODFREY extent that it vacated and remanded on Plaintiffs’ constitutional claims. However, in light of the views he expressed in his dissenting opinion in Aleman Gonzalez, Judge Fernandez respectfully dissented from the majority opinion to the extent it affirmed the district court’s judgment and leaves the permanent injunction in place.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.