Rivas Rosales v. Barr

Background

Jose Gabriel Rivas Rosales, Reyna Romero Lopez, and their minor child E.R.R. were Salvadoran nationals who applied for admission to the United States on or around December 7, 2018. The Department of Homeland Security issued them notices to appear in immigration court, and their case was designated as a family-unit case. They later filed an asylum application and were scheduled for an individual hearing before Immigration Judge Gilda Terrazas by video teleconferencing.

The petitioners challenged the use of video teleconferencing and what they described as super-expedited scheduling of family-unit removal proceedings. They alleged that these practices violated due process and the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. They sought a writ of mandamus and a preliminary injunction stopping the use of video teleconferencing in their case. The court had denied their request for a temporary restraining order, and the petitioners then appeared at the individual hearing by video. The hearing lasted three hours, after which the immigration judge scheduled another hearing because there was not enough time to finish.

Jurisdictional analysis

The court first considered whether it had subject-matter jurisdiction, meaning legal authority to hear the case. The petitioners identified several possible jurisdictional statutes, including provisions concerning banking associations, declaratory judgments, writs, the Administrative Procedure Act, federal-question jurisdiction, and mandamus. The court concluded that none supplied jurisdiction. It explained that some cited statutes did not apply, while others provided remedies or review standards but did not independently give a district court authority to hear the case.

The court focused on Section 1252(b)(9) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That provision channels judicial review of legal and factual questions arising from removal proceedings into the review process provided by the immigration laws. Relying particularly on Ninth Circuit precedent, the court explained that claims independent of or wholly collateral to removal proceedings may remain within district-court jurisdiction, but claims challenging procedures used within removal proceedings do not.

The court determined that the petitioners’ claims arose from their removal proceedings. Their challenge concerned the way their immigration hearings were conducted, including the use of video teleconferencing, as well as the scheduling and timing of those proceedings. The court distinguished a prior case involving an asylum-eligibility rule because that rule operated before removal proceedings began and could affect people who never entered removal proceedings. Here, the challenged procedures were part of the ongoing proceedings themselves.

The court also rejected the petitioners’ request, raised for the first time in their reply brief, to treat their filing as a petition seeking release from unlawful detention. The court stated that the argument was waived because it was raised too late and that, even if considered, it lacked merit. The petitioners were challenging the procedures used in their removal proceedings, rather than detention independent of those proceedings.

Rulings

Because the court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction, it denied the petitioners’ motion for a preliminary injunction and dismissed the action. The court did not decide whether video teleconferencing or the scheduling policies violated due process or equal protection. It also denied the petitioners’ motion for judicial notice as moot because the documents concerned the merits of a motion the court could not consider. Judge Edward M. Chen stated that the order disposed of Docket Nos. 4 and 24.