Altowaiti v. Wolf

Background

Five families of Yemeni descent sued officials of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The plaintiffs included U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents who had filed I-130 petitions for relatives, as well as the relatives named in those petitions. They alleged that USCIS had improperly and discriminatorily denied their petitions and had used practices that targeted Yemeni beneficiaries. Their claims invoked the Administrative Procedure Act, the Declaratory Judgment Act, and substantive and procedural due process protections.

The defendants moved to dismiss the El Naham and Algomai Families’ claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1). They also moved to sever the claims of the Altowaiti, Assaidi, and Al Sormi Families into three separate actions. The plaintiffs opposed dismissal and sought leave to amend their complaint to challenge the delay in deciding the Algomai Family’s appeal before the Board of Immigration Appeals.

El Naham Family

USCIS approved the El Naham Family’s I-130 petitions on February 7, 2020. The plaintiffs conceded that this made the El Naham Family’s claims moot. The court agreed and dismissed those claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

Algomai Family

USCIS had denied the Algomai Family’s petitions, and the family had appealed those decisions to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Those appeals remained pending. The court explained that the Administrative Procedure Act generally requires a final agency action before judicial review, but it concluded that this final-action requirement was not jurisdictional. Instead, it was an essential part of an Administrative Procedure Act claim and should ordinarily be raised under Rule 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim.

The court therefore treated the defendants’ jurisdictional motion as a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. Because the plaintiffs had not disputed the defendants’ argument that the complaint failed to state a claim concerning the Algomai Family, the court treated that issue as conceded and dismissed the Algomai Family’s claims under Rule 12(b)(6). The court expressly did not decide whether USCIS’s denial of the petitions would qualify as final agency action while the administrative appeals remained pending.

Leave to Amend

The Algomai Family sought to amend the complaint to challenge the delay in deciding its Board of Immigration Appeals proceedings under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Mandamus Act. The court denied leave to amend because the proposed claims would be futile. USCIS had already denied the I-130 petitions, so the court could not order USCIS to take an action it had already taken. The pending appeals were before the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Department of Justice and was not a party to the case, while the defendants were officials of the Department of Homeland Security. The court concluded that the defendants had no required duty to decide those appeals.

Severance

The defendants and plaintiffs agreed that the remaining claims should be separated. The court granted the defendants’ motion to sever the case into three actions: one for the Altowaiti Family, one for the Assaidi Family, and one for the Al Sormi Family. The court directed each group to file an amended complaint limited to claims arising from that family’s I-130 petitions. It set August 3, 2021, as the deadline for those amended complaints and October 4, 2021, as the deadline for the defendants to answer or otherwise respond.

Disposition

Judge Edgardo Ramos granted the defendants’ motion, denied the plaintiffs’ counter-motion for leave to amend, dismissed the Algomai and El Naham Families from the suit, and directed the Clerk of Court to sever the remaining claims into three actions. The opinion does not state that any dismissal was with or without prejudice.