Ahmed v. United States Department of State

Background

Adnan Ahmed, a United States citizen, filed the case concerning his spouse’s immigrant-visa application. The spouse, a citizen of Pakistan, was found “documentarily qualified” on May 25, 2022, meaning the required documents had been submitted and a visa number was available. The next step was an interview at the United States Embassy in Islamabad, but the interview had not been scheduled when the defendants moved for summary judgment.

Ahmed sought an order requiring the defendants to adjudicate the visa application under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Mandamus Act. He also alleged that the government’s failure to provide a reasonable process violated his rights under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

First Claim: Unreasonable Agency Delay

The APA allows a court to require an agency to take an action that it has unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed. The court explained that such relief generally requires a clear, certain, and mandatory agency duty and an unreasonable delay in performing that duty.

The defendants argued that they had no duty to schedule an interview within a specific period after the petition was approved and the spouse became documentarily qualified. The court did not decide that the defendants lacked such a duty. Instead, it assumed the relevant duty for purposes of its analysis and concluded that the delay was not unreasonable.

The court applied six factors commonly used to evaluate agency-delay claims. It gave particular weight to the first factor, whether the agency’s timing followed a reasonable approach, and the fourth factor, how accelerating one application would affect higher-priority or competing agency work.

The first factor favored the defendants because the interview backlog resulted from the embassy’s limited processing capacity and a first-in, first-out scheduling system. The court also considered the four-month suspension of visa services in March 2020, continuing restrictions after services resumed, staffing shortages, increased demand after the suspension of operations at the United States Embassy in Kabul, and the prioritization of certain Afghan special-immigrant-visa applicants. At the time of the defendants’ motion, 12,064 documentarily complete immediate-relative-visa applicants were waiting for interviews, and 1,363 applicants were ahead of Ahmed’s spouse.

The second factor was neutral because Ahmed had not shown that Congress required immigrant-visa applications to be processed within a particular period. The third and fifth factors favored Ahmed because the separation from his spouse caused hardship, including emotional difficulty, his spouse’s miscarriage and loss of employment, and Ahmed’s diagnosis with prediabetes. The fourth factor favored the defendants because moving Ahmed’s spouse forward would place her ahead of applicants whose applications had been completed earlier and would not reduce the overall backlog. The sixth factor was either neutral or favored the defendants because Ahmed offered speculation, rather than evidence, that the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program caused the delay.

The court concluded that the factors favoring the defendants outweighed those favoring Ahmed. It held that the defendants were entitled to summary judgment on the first claim because the undisputed facts did not show an unreasonable delay.

Discovery Request

Ahmed argued that he should have an opportunity to conduct discovery about exceptional circumstances and the reasons for the delay. The court concluded that discovery was not warranted. It found that Ahmed had not submitted the affidavit or declaration required to explain why he could not present facts needed to oppose summary judgment. It also found that he had not shown that the requested evidence existed or would prevent summary judgment.

Second Claim: Due Process

Ahmed argued that he had a protected liberty interest connected to his spouse’s visa application and that the delay violated due process. The court noted that Ninth Circuit precedent had recognized that a United States citizen possesses a liberty interest in a noncitizen spouse’s visa application, while also noting that the Supreme Court had granted review in a related case involving visa denial rather than processing delay.

The court assumed, without deciding, that Ahmed had a liberty interest in his spouse’s visa application. Applying the due-process framework that considers the private interest, the risk of an erroneous deprivation, the value of additional safeguards, and the government’s interest, the court relied on its earlier analysis and concluded that the delay was not unreasonable. It therefore held that the defendants were entitled to summary judgment on the due-process claim.

Disposition

The court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The ruling granted judgment for the defendants on both Ahmed’s claim concerning unreasonable agency delay and his due-process claim.