Carlos A. G. G. v. Whitaker
- Wilhelmina Wright
- 0:19-cv-00459
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 3
In Carlos A. G. G. v. Whitaker, Judge Wright dismissed the habeas case without prejudice as moot after Carlos was released from detention.
Carlos A. G. G.; the respondents, including Mathew Whitaker and other government officials; and the magistrate judge’s recommendation.
What happened
Carlos A. G. G. challenged his detention by immigration authorities. He had been held under a law requiring detention for certain convictions, but an immigration judge decided that his Iowa conviction did not make him removable. The government appealed that decision, and Carlos filed this case while the appeal was pending.
A magistrate judge recommended granting Carlos’s petition and ordering his immediate release. The government objected, reporting that the immigration appeals board had dismissed its appeal and that Carlos had already been released from custody.
The court, in an order by Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright, rejected the recommendation, denied the habeas petition as moot, and dismissed the case without prejudice. The court ruled that release ended the detention dispute and that no exception to the mootness rule applied.
The detailed version
- Carlos A. G. G. v. Whitaker · No. 0:19-cv-00459
- Wilhelmina Wright
- Aug. 26, 2019
Background
Carlos A. G. G. was held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under 8 U.S.C. § 1226. The opinion states that he had been convicted in Iowa state court of delivering a controlled substance. On April 19, 2018, an immigration judge decided that this conviction was not a controlled-substance offense for purposes of the Immigration and Nationality Act and therefore that Carlos was not removable. The Department of Homeland Security appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals while Carlos was detained.
Carlos filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which is a request for a court order addressing unlawful detention. A magistrate judge recommended granting the petition and ordering Carlos’s immediate release. In objections to that recommendation, the respondents submitted a declaration stating that the Board of Immigration Appeals had dismissed the government’s appeal on May 10, 2019, and that Carlos had been released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on May 16, 2019.
Analysis
The respondents argued only that the petition had become moot. A case is moot when a court can no longer provide effective relief. The court explained that release from custody generally makes a detention challenge moot unless an exception applies, such as a continuing collateral injury, an injury capable of repetition but likely to evade review, a discontinued practice that the respondents could resume, or a properly certified class action.
The court found that none of those exceptions applied. Carlos challenged only the lawfulness of his detention, and the detention had ended. The court found no continuing collateral injury. It also concluded that, under the facts and circumstances, the detention could not be repeated because the Board of Immigration Appeals had affirmed that Carlos was not removable. The case was not a class action.
Disposition
The court rejected the June 17, 2019 Report and Recommendation, denied Carlos’s habeas petition as moot, and dismissed the case without prejudice. The court ordered that judgment be entered accordingly.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.