Munoz-Barba v. Mayorkas

Background

Alfredo Munoz-Barba and Karina Chavez-Alvarez brought an immigration mandamus action seeking to require United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to schedule an interview and decide Munoz-Barba’s pending I-589 asylum application. Munoz-Barba filed the application with the San Francisco Asylum Office on July 16, 2020, and identified Chavez-Alvarez as a dependent family member. The plaintiffs alleged that the time their application had remained pending was unreasonable.

They asserted claims under the federal mandamus statute and the Administrative Procedure Act. Their unreasonable-delay theory is evaluated under six factors commonly called the TRAC factors, which address issues including the agency’s scheduling method, congressional timing expectations, the effects of delay on health and welfare, competing agency priorities, the interests harmed by delay, and whether misconduct is present.

The government moved for summary judgment, arguing that USCIS had not unreasonably delayed the application. Its evidence described USCIS’s “Last-In-First-Out” scheduling system, under which newer asylum applications generally receive priority, as well as staffing and workload pressures involving border screening and other cases. The government also submitted evidence about the San Francisco Asylum Office’s reduced interview capacity.

Rather than oppose the summary-judgment motion, the plaintiffs filed a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d). That rule allows a nonmoving party to seek additional discovery when it cannot yet present facts needed to oppose summary judgment.

Court’s analysis

The court held that General Order 61 did not bar the plaintiffs’ request. The order does not make discovery available automatically in immigration mandamus cases, but discovery may be allowed when the requirements of Rule 56(d) are met. The court also held that the Administrative Procedure Act does not absolutely prohibit discovery outside the agency record. Although such discovery is unusual in a claim based on agency delay, the court concluded that limited discovery could be necessary for effective review here.

The court declined to decide whether the delay was reasonable as a matter of law. It stated that the reasonableness of a particular delay depends on the facts of the individual case. The court found that the government’s evidence raised questions about whether the San Francisco Asylum Office’s processing capacity had sharply declined, whether older applications were being pushed farther back indefinitely, and whether USCIS’s use of LIFO still served its stated purpose under current conditions. The court noted that, if the government’s approach meant that the plaintiffs’ application would never be decided, that approach would not be a reasonable scheduling method.

The court nevertheless found the plaintiffs’ discovery requests overbroad. It limited discovery primarily to recent information relevant to the effects of current staffing, border workloads, and the operation of USCIS’s scheduling system.

Ruling

The motion was GRANTED in part and DENIED in part.

The court granted limited discovery requiring the government to provide:

- A sworn declaration stating, for each month from May 2023 through the present, the average number of asylum interviews conducted each week by the San Francisco Asylum Office. - A sworn declaration stating, for each quarter beginning in January 2020 through the present, the percentage of asylum applications filed nationally within that quarter that were placed in the backlog under LIFO category (c) and adjudicated during the same quarter. - A sworn declaration identifying, for each month from July 2020 through the present, when some or all applications in LIFO category (b)—applications filed within 21 days—were placed in the backlog because of a “surge,” along with an estimated percentage of those applications that were not processed under LIFO’s priority system. - An updated declaration explaining how USCIS selects applications for officers assigned to reduce the backlog, and stating the number of applications those officers adjudicated each month from January 2023 through the present. - An update to the government’s declaration stating the number of interviews conducted and applications adjudicated during the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first two quarters of 2024.

The court denied the remaining requests, including requests for all documents referenced in agency declarations, historical policy documents dating back to LIFO’s adoption in 1995, broad information about “surges,” information about expedited interviews that the plaintiffs did not request, information about advance parole that they did not pursue, and other requests that did not identify specific facts necessary to oppose summary judgment or were too broad.

The government was ordered to provide the required discovery within 60 days. During the same period, the parties were ordered to meet and confer and submit a joint proposed schedule for summary-judgment briefing. The court did not rule on the pending summary-judgment motion or decide whether the asylum-application delay was unreasonable.