Rauda v. Jennings

Background

Willian Matias Rauda filed a petition asking the court to stop the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out his deportation. He then requested an emergency temporary restraining order, which is a short-term court order intended to prevent immediate harm while a case is considered.

Rauda had previously sought protection under the Convention Against Torture. An Immigration Judge found him credible and found that Salvadoran authorities had tortured him on two occasions, but denied protection after concluding that changed circumstances made future torture unlikely. The Board of Immigration Appeals denied relief, and the Ninth Circuit denied Rauda’s petition for review.

Rauda later moved to reopen his immigration case. He alleged that an MS-13 member had threatened him and that political changes in El Salvador undermined the earlier finding that Salvadoran officials would not allow gang violence against him. After the Board of Immigration Appeals denied his request for an emergency stay of removal, Rauda asked the district court to prevent his deportation while the motion to reopen and his district-court petition were pending.

Issue

The court considered whether it had jurisdiction—the legal power to hear the dispute—to decide Rauda’s claims that carrying out his removal order would violate due process, the Convention Against Torture, and the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Court’s reasoning

The court held that 8 U.S.C. § 1252(g) barred jurisdiction over claims arising from the government’s decision or action to execute a removal order. Because both Rauda’s petition and his request for a temporary restraining order sought to stop execution of his removal order, the court concluded that the statute applied.

The court rejected Rauda’s reliance on earlier decisions involving different types of immigration challenges, including challenges to the underlying legal basis for deportability, bond decisions, agency policies, or violations of a court-ordered stay. The court found that Rauda was directly challenging execution of his removal order instead.

The court also concluded that applying § 1252(g) did not violate the Constitution’s Suspension Clause, which protects access to the traditional remedy for unlawful custody. The court reasoned that Rauda primarily sought a temporary stay of removal rather than release from custody, and that his challenge depended partly on factual questions about what might happen after removal.

Disposition

The court denied Rauda’s motion for a temporary restraining order. Separately, because Rauda faced a possibility of severe and irreparable harm if deported and because courts had reached differing conclusions about the jurisdictional issue, the court extended the existing administrative restraining order. The government was ordered not to deport Rauda for five full days from the order’s issuance so he could seek further relief from the Ninth Circuit.