J.L. v. Lee Francis Cissna

Background

In August 2018, J.L. and other young immigrants filed a class action against the Department of Homeland Security, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and individual officials. They sought Special Immigrant Juvenile status under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(27)(J), which applied to certain unmarried people under 21 who had obtained a qualifying state-court guardianship or dependency order after being abused, neglected, or abandoned in their countries of origin.

The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants had uniformly rejected California probate-court guardianship orders by concluding that those courts lacked authority to make the required findings. On October 24, 2018, the court entered a preliminary injunction. It barred defendants from denying Special Immigrant Juvenile status on the specified jurisdictional ground and from starting removal proceedings against or removing covered petitioners. It also required at least 14 days’ notice to plaintiffs’ counsel before defendants took adverse adjudicatory or enforcement action against individual plaintiffs or proposed class members. The court later certified a class covering people with qualifying California guardianship orders whose status petitions had been or would be denied on that ground.

Contempt finding

After final judgment was entered on December 18, 2019, the court retained jurisdiction to address violations of the preliminary injunction. The parties agreed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had removed five people on the class list—N.P.G., E.A., R.M.N., E.S.L.D.A., and M.W.D.C.—and that defendants had not provided plaintiffs’ counsel with 14 days’ advance notice of adverse action against them.

Civil contempt is a court’s response to disobedience of a specific court order. The court explained that contempt does not require a willful violation, but a defendant may avoid contempt by showing that it took all reasonable steps to comply. The violation must be proved by clear and convincing evidence, and substantial compliance can be a defense when the defendant made every reasonable effort.

The defendants argued that they reasonably interpreted the injunction as excluding people with pending Special Immigrant Juvenile petitions. The court disagreed. It read the injunction as covering people with either denied or pending petitions based on qualifying California guardianship orders. The court also rejected the defendants’ argument that they had taken all reasonable compliance steps. Although they had issued instructions to USCIS personnel, the court found that they could and should have monitored Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s actions and that their failure to discover the removals for months showed an unreasonable lack of diligence.

The court emphasized that the five class members had been found to have suffered abuse, neglect, or abandonment in their countries of origin. Their removal exposed them to further harm, and their absence prevented them from proceeding with their status petitions. Plaintiffs’ counsel also reported that one removed class member had been assaulted after returning to the country of origin. The court therefore held all defendants—Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, Chad F. Wolf, Robert M. Cowan, the Department of Homeland Security, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services—in civil contempt.

Sanctions and required actions

The court explained that civil-contempt sanctions may be compensatory, meaning they address injuries caused by the violation, or coercive, meaning they encourage compliance with the court’s order. It ordered defendants to:

Defendants also had to file a compliance report by March 6, 2020, and every 14 days afterward until further order.