Alva v. Kaiser

Background

The court considered Petitioner Juan Edelmar Alva Alva’s ex parte motion for leave to file a motion for reconsideration. He sought to challenge part of the court’s October 16, 2025 clarification order concerning a preliminary injunction issued on August 21, 2025. The challenged statement said that the Constitution did not require hearing procedures beyond those applicable to discretionary detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a).

Legal standard and analysis

Under Civil Local Rule 7-9(b), a party seeking permission to file a reconsideration motion must show reasonable diligence and one of specified circumstances. The circumstances relevant here were a change in law after the original order or a manifest failure to consider a dispositive legal argument previously presented.

The court found neither circumstance. Alva Alva acknowledged that he had raised the legal argument before, and the court had considered it in the clarification order. The court also found no binding, material change in law requiring the government to prove by clear and convincing evidence that continued detention was justified in this context.

The court distinguished cases involving mandatory detention under section 1226(c), where due process requires the government to meet that burden for prolonged detention. It explained that the procedures at issue here were ordered as a matter of due process rather than technically arising under section 1226(a), but that the reason for the hearing was comparable: Alva Alva was treated as subject to discretionary rather than mandatory detention. The court therefore concluded that due process did not require protections beyond those available in section 1226(a) discretionary-detention hearings.

The court also noted that, in the existing discretionary-detention system, the government must show a material change in circumstances involving flight risk or danger to the community before re-detaining someone after a prior release determination. The court considered that protection constitutionally sufficient.

Disposition

Judge Rita F. Lin denied the motion for leave to file a motion for reconsideration without prejudice. The order allows the issue to be raised again if the government takes the position that no material change in circumstances is required or if the Board of Immigration Appeals overturns the cited rule. The court stated that, in either event, due process might require additional procedural safeguards to reduce the risk of an erroneous loss of liberty.