Awal v. United States Department of State

Background

Ifrah Muhumed Awal alleged that the defendants unreasonably delayed making a final decision on her husband Ibraam Abdi Bashiir’s immigrant-visa application. Awal filed the visa application on April 2, 2020. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services allegedly approved the underlying spouse petition on April 24, 2022, after which the matter went to the State Department’s National Visa Center and then to the U.S. Consulate in Johannesburg.

Bashiir interviewed at the consulate on February 8, 2023. He did not receive a visa after the interview. According to a declaration submitted by the defendants, the consular officer refused the application because the officer was not satisfied that Bashiir was eligible for a visa and determined that additional security screening was warranted. Bashiir answered questions from consular staff, and the declaration stated that additional screening remained ongoing as of April 12, 2024. The application remained listed as refused under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Awal asserted two claims. First, she claimed under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Mandamus Act that the defendants unreasonably delayed adjudicating Bashiir’s application. Second, she claimed that the delay violated her due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. Part of the delay claim alleged that the defendants used the Department of Homeland Security’s Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program, or CARRP.

Due Process Claim

The court held that the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of State v. Muñoz foreclosed Awal’s due process claim. Muñoz held that a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in a noncitizen spouse being admitted to the United States. The court therefore granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the due process claim. The court also noted that it viewed the issue as failure to allege a constitutionally protected interest, rather than an Article III standing issue.

CARRP Allegations

Awal alleged that CARRP caused delays in security investigations and was used because Bashiir was from a predominantly Muslim country. The court concluded that Awal had not alleged enough facts to establish standing to challenge CARRP. In particular, the court found that her allegations did not adequately show that CARRP affected Bashiir’s application specifically. To the extent the unreasonable-delay claim was based on the alleged use of CARRP, the court dismissed that claim.

Administrative Procedure Act and Mandamus Claim

The court considered the Administrative Procedure Act and Mandamus Act theories together because it found that their analysis was the same. The Administrative Procedure Act allows a court to compel agency action that has been unreasonably delayed, while the Mandamus Act allows a court to compel a federal officer or agency to perform a duty owed to the plaintiff.

The defendants argued that the delay was not unreasonable under the six-factor test commonly called the TRAC factors. Those factors consider the agency’s reason for the delay, any congressional timetable, effects on human health and welfare, competing agency priorities, the interests harmed by the delay, and whether the agency acted improperly. The court declined to resolve the issue on a motion to dismiss. It found that deciding whether the nearly two-year delay was unreasonable required a more fully developed record, including more information about the interests harmed and the effect of expediting the case on competing agency priorities.

The defendants also argued that Bashiir’s application had already received a final decision because it was marked refused after the consular interview. The court rejected dismissal on that basis. It was not persuaded, on the record before it, that a refusal followed by administrative processing was necessarily a final agency decision ending the State Department’s obligation to adjudicate the application. The court relied in part on the State Department’s status information stating that an applicant whose case was refused for administrative processing would receive another adjudication after processing was complete.

Disposition

The court ordered that the defendants’ motion to dismiss was granted in part and denied in part. The court dismissed Awal’s due process claim. It dismissed the unreasonable-delay claim under the Administrative Procedure Act and Mandamus Act insofar as it was based on the defendants’ alleged use of CARRP. Otherwise, the court denied the motion. The order did not direct the defendants to issue Bashiir a visa.