Kurt v. Mayorkas

Background

Fatma Kurt sued Alejandro Mayorkas and other defendants over the delay in processing her asylum application. The application had been pending for more than three years. Kurt, who proceeded without a lawyer, asked the court under the Mandamus Act and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to order U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to process the application within a reasonable time.

Kurt had employment authorization but said she could not pursue her desired career as a court interpreter without lawful permanent resident status. She also said that uncertainty about her immigration status and career possibilities made it difficult to plan for the future and manage her mental health. The defendants filed a cross-motion for summary judgment.

Mandamus claim

The Mandamus Act allows a federal district court to order a federal officer or agency to perform a duty owed to a plaintiff. The court explained that this remedy requires a clear and certain claim, a plainly prescribed nondiscretionary duty, and no other adequate remedy.

The immigration statute states that, absent exceptional circumstances, an initial asylum interview or hearing should begin no later than 45 days after the application is filed. But the same statutory subsection says that it creates no substantive or procedural right or benefit legally enforceable against the United States, its agencies, or its officers. The court held that this provision foreclosed mandamus relief. It therefore denied Kurt’s motion and granted the defendants’ motion as to the mandamus claim.

APA jurisdiction

The defendants argued that the absence of an enforceable private right under the immigration statute also prevented judicial review of USCIS’s delay. The court rejected that argument. It held that it had jurisdiction to review whether USCIS had unreasonably delayed processing Kurt’s application under the APA, which requires an agency to conclude a matter within a reasonable time.

APA claim

To decide whether the delay was legally unreasonable, the court applied the six factors used in agency-delay cases: whether the agency follows a reasonable rule for acting; whether Congress provided a timetable; whether human health and welfare are at stake; how expediting one case would affect competing agency priorities; the interests harmed by the delay; and whether the agency acted improperly or in bad faith.

The court found that the first and most important factor favored the defendants. USCIS’s scheduling system was designed to discourage frivolous applications and manage the backlog, and the court found that the delay resulted from resource shortages and geopolitical factors rather than mismanagement. The court noted that delays of five years or more had been treated in some cases as seemingly infinite, but Kurt’s delay was about three years.

The congressional-timetable factor was neutral or, at most, slightly favored Kurt. Although the statute refers to a 45-day period, the court found that USCIS was facing exceptional circumstances because of an unprecedented number of applications and insufficient staffing.

The court considered the factors involving health, welfare, and the interests harmed by the delay together. It acknowledged Kurt’s hardships but found that her situation was not distinguishable from the hardships faced by other asylum applicants in similar positions. Those factors therefore favored the defendants.

The competing-priorities factor weighed heavily in favor of the defendants. The court reasoned that ordering USCIS to expedite Kurt’s application would move her to the front of the line at the expense of other applicants, producing no overall gain. The impropriety or bad-faith factor was neutral because Kurt did not allege misconduct by the defendants and the court found none; bad faith was not required to establish unreasonable delay.

Disposition

The court concluded that four factors favored the defendants and two were neutral. It denied Kurt’s motion for summary judgment and granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment as to her APA claim and as to all claims. The opinion states that the court entered this ruling because judicial intervention would not effectively address the larger asylum-processing backlog.