Ameen v. Garland

Background

Omar Abdulsattar Ameen had previously obtained a limited grant of his petition challenging his immigration detention. The court ordered the United States Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of the San Francisco Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office to provide a constitutionally sufficient bond hearing. At that hearing, the government had to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Ameen remained a flight risk or a danger to the community while his removal proceedings continued.

An immigration judge held a second bond hearing over three days in May 2022. The Department of Homeland Security presented new, unclassified evidence, including declarations and testimony from Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Jessi Groff and Naval Special Warfare Command intelligence officer Lieutenant Adrian Medina. Their testimony was subject to cross-examination. On May 17, 2022, the immigration judge denied Ameen’s release, finding by clear and convincing evidence that he was both a danger to the community and a flight risk.

Ameen then filed a motion asking the district court to enforce its earlier judgment and order his release. In his reply, he focused on two alleged due-process violations: the government’s use of, and the immigration judge’s reliance on, classified information about his alleged role in a group that built and placed improvised explosive devices in Iraq; and the immigration judge’s alleged failure to apply the clear-and-convincing-evidence standard.

Jurisdiction and Exhaustion

The government argued that the motion was effectively a second petition challenging Ameen’s detention and that the court lacked jurisdiction or should require him to first appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals. The court declined to require exhaustion before considering Ameen’s constitutional due-process arguments.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision in Martinez v. Clark limited the court’s review. It held that whether a particular noncitizen is dangerous is a discretionary determination that a federal court may not review. It also held that due process does not require immigration courts to consider conditional release when deciding whether to continue detention on dangerousness grounds. But the Ninth Circuit recognized that district courts may review claims that the immigration authorities applied the wrong burden of proof or failed to consider legally required alternatives to detention.

Classified Information

The court rejected Ameen’s argument that the immigration judge improperly relied on classified information. The court first noted that the immigration judge found both dangerousness and flight risk, and that either ground was enough to deny bond. The allegedly classified information concerned dangerousness, not flight risk, so it could not undermine the separate flight-risk finding.

The court also rejected the argument on its merits. The references to “validated intelligence reports” arose during cross-examination when Medina was asked about the sources of his opinions; the reports were not affirmatively introduced by the government through production to the immigration judge or through the witnesses’ testimony. The immigration judge relied on other evidence, including witness interviews, Federal Bureau of Investigation memoranda, and testimony from Groff and Medina that Ameen’s counsel had an opportunity to challenge through cross-examination.

The court also identified additional evidence supporting the immigration judge’s dangerousness finding, including Ameen’s communications with people known to have engaged in terrorist activities, ISIS-related images on a seized device, contacts or attempted contacts with known terrorist associates, and alleged misrepresentations about his interactions with armed groups. Because other evidence supported the discretionary finding under the clear-and-convincing standard, the court concluded that any reliance on classified information did not deny Ameen due process.

Clear-and-Convincing-Evidence Standard

The court held that the immigration judge applied the correct burden of proof. Under Martinez, when an immigration judge acknowledges and purports to apply the correct standard, a court generally accepts that statement unless the record shows a specific warning sign, such as misstating the record or failing to address highly important evidence.

Ameen argued that the immigration judge accepted the government’s witnesses without sufficient corroboration, rejected declarations from Ameen’s family, and did not adequately support the flight-risk finding. The court characterized these arguments as disagreements with how the immigration judge weighed disputed evidence, rather than evidence that the judge ignored or misconstrued a critical part of the record. Because the challenges concerned discretionary determinations that the court could not review, the court denied Ameen’s motion to enforce the judgment.

Disposition

The court’s order states: “Ameen’s Motion to Enforce the judgment is DENIED.”