Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, immigration officials “shall take into custody any‖ deportable alien who has committed various crimes” when the alien is released from detention for those crimes, 8 U.S.C. 1226(c)(1). The Act requires officials to hold such aliens without any possibility of release while awaiting removal. Sylvain, a citizen of Haiti, entered the U.S. as a legal permanent resident in 1988. He has been convicted of more than 10 drug-related crimes and served a three-year prison sentence for making and selling cocaine. He was convicted for unlawfully possessing a weapon and for criminal mischief. Sylvain was last arrested in 2007 for possessing drugs. He pled guilty and received a conditional discharge. Under New York law, a conditional discharge does not require imprisonment or probation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested him in 2011, concluding that he was deportable and subject to mandatory detention, although he was last in custody four years earlier. The district court granted his petition for habeas corpus, finding that mandatory detention did not apply. Sylvain received a hearing, paid bond, and is not in custody. His next removal hearing is in 2014. The Third Circuit reversed; mandatory detention does not require immediate detention. View "Sylvain v. Att'y Gen. of the U.S." on Justia Law

Defendants, both Chinese nationals, shipped tens of millions of dollars worth of sophisticated electronic components from the United States to China with little regard for whether the parts they sold were export-controlled. In 2008, Defendants were arrested and later indicted for thirty-four counts of export-related offenses. The two were ultimately convicted of, among other things, exporting without a license items designated as defense articles on the U.S. Munitions List and items controlled under the Commerce Control List, conspiracy to violate the Munitions List and Commerce Control List restrictions, and conspiracy to file materially false Shipper's Export Declarations (SED) with the Commerce Department. On appeal, Defendants argued that the federal government's arms export control system constituted a regulatory scheme that violated the Due Process Clause. The First Circuit Court of Appeals (1) affirmed the Commerce Control List convictions and SED convictions, holding that the federal government's arms export control system does not violate the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause; and (2) vacated the Munitions List convictions, holding that the district court erred by not submitting to the jury an element of the offense, and the error was not harmless. Remanded. View "United States v. Wu" on Justia Law

When her car was stopped, Villega, then pregnant, failed to produce a valid driver’s license. At the jail, an agent of the U.S. through Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(g) program, 8 U.S.C. 1357(g), determined that Villega was not lawfully in the U.S. A detainer was imposed, so that federal immigration officials would delay action until resolution of pending state charges. Unable to post bond, she was classified as a medium-security inmate because of the detainer and held for two days, until she informed a guard that she was about to have her baby. For transportation, Villega was placed on a stretcher with her wrists handcuffed in front of her body and her legs restrained together. At the hospital, the handcuffs were removed, but one of Villega’s legs remained shackled to the stretcher before and after the birth. In her suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, the district court granted summary judgment on her shackling and denial-of-breast-pump claims; a jury awarded $200,000. The Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded, noting material factual disputes surrounding whether Villega was shown to be a flight risk, whether officers had any knowledge about a doctor’s no-restraint order, and the conflicting expert testimony about the ill effects of shackling. View "Villegas v. Metro. Gov't of Nashville & Davidson Cty." on Justia Law

Immigration officials initiated removal proceedings against Chaidez in 2009 upon learning that she had pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 2004. To avoid removal, she sought to overturn that conviction by filing a petition for a writ of coram nobis, contending that her former attorney’s failure to advise her of the guilty plea’s immigration consequences constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. While her petition was pending, the Supreme Court held, in Padilla v. Kentucky, that the Sixth Amendment requires defense attorneys to inform non-citizen clients of the deportation risks of guilty pleas. The district court vacated Chaidez’s conviction. The Seventh Circuit reversed, holding that Padilla had declared a new rule and should not apply in a challenge to a final conviction. The Supreme Court affirmed. Padilla does not apply retroactively to cases already final on direct review. A case does not announce a new rule if it merely applies a principle that governed a prior decision to a different set of facts. Padilla’s ruling answered an open question about the Sixth Amendment’s reach, in a way that altered the law of most jurisdictions, breaking new ground and imposing a new obligation. View "Chaidez v. United States" on Justia Law

Defendant, a citizen of Mexico, was indicted for possessing firearms while being illegally or unlawfully in the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(5). Defendant filed a motion to dismiss the charge, contending that section 922(g)(5) violated his rights under the Second and Fifth Amendments. The district court denied the motion, holding that section 922(g)(5) was constitutional. The court affirmed the judgment, concluding that the scope of the Second Amendment did not extend to provide protection to illegal aliens, because illegal aliens were not law-abiding members of the political community and aliens who have entered the United States unlawfully have no more rights under the Second Amendment than do aliens outside of the United States seeking admittance. On defendant's Fifth Amendment challenge, the court concluded that prohibiting aliens, as a class, from possessing firearms was rationally related to Congress' legitimate interest in public safety. View "United States v. Carpio-Leon" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs alleged that Davidson County Sheriff's officers arrested and wrongfully interrogated and detained them while officers investigated Plaintiffs' immigration status pursuant to the October 2009 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) entered into between the Davidson County Sheriff's Office (DCSO) and the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The MOA authorized selected DCSO personnel to perform certain immigration officer duties after being trained and certified by ICE. The Supreme Court accepted certification to answer whether the MOA violated the Charter of Nashville and Davidson County. The Court held (1) the MOA did not violate the Charter or any other state law cited by Plaintiffs; and (2) the Sheriff of Davidson County had authority under the Charter to perform the duties enumerated in the MOA. View "Renteria-Villegas v. Metro. Gov't of Nashville & Davidson County " on Justia Law

These appeals arose from the ruling of the named defendant, the freedom of information commission (commission), that defendant Rashad El Badrawi was entitled, under the Freedom of Information Act (act), to the disclosure of a document that the plaintiff, the commissioner of correction (commissioner), obtained from a file in the National Crime Information Center, which is maintained by the FBI. The commissioner and the intervenor, the United States, appealed from the commission's ruling, claiming that the commission improperly ordered disclosure of the document because, among other reasons, disclosure was barred by a federal regulation, and therefore, the document was exempt from the act in accordance with Conn. Gen. Stat. 1-210(a). The trial court dismissed in part and sustained in part the appeals and ordered that a redacted version of the document be disclosed to El Badrawi. The commissioner and the United States appealed. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the document fell within an exemption to the act set forth in section 1-210(a), and therefore, El Badrawi was not entitled to disclosure of the document. View "Comm'r of Corr. v. Freedom of Info. Comm'n " on Justia Law

Petitioner Shahid Iqbal appealed a district court's denial of his motion for attorney fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA). Petitioner is a native and citizen of Pakistan who acquired lawful permanent residency in the United States in 2002. On July 11, 2008, he filed an application for naturalization with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). On August 17, 2009, he successfully passed a naturalization examination, but the USCIS did not adjudicate his application due to an ongoing background check by the FBI. On June 18, 2010, still having received no decision on his application, Petitioner filed this action. On September 13, 2010, the USCIS denied Petitioner's naturalization application on the ground that he had not met the physical presence requirements for naturalization. Based on the denial, Defendants filed a motion to dismiss Petitioner's petition as moot. In the alternative, Defendants asked the district court to decline jurisdiction in deference to the agency’s expertise in adjudicating naturalization applications. The district court denied the motion to dismiss, concluding that once Petitioner filed his petition, the USCIS no longer had jurisdiction to adjudicate the naturalization application. On April 5, 2011, Petitioner filed his motion for an award of attorney fees and expenses under EAJA, arguing that he was a prevailing party because the district court denied the government’s motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction and remanded the case to the USCIS for a determination of the merits of his naturalization application. He also argued that the government’s delay on his application and its position on its motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction were not substantially justified. The district court denied the fee motion, concluding that Petitioner was not a prevailing party because he had obtained no judicial determination on the merits of his claims, the court had not ordered the USCIS or the FBI to act within a certain period of time, and the court had not retained jurisdiction after remanding the matter to the agency. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court's decision to deny attorney's fees.

This appeal involved challenges to ten provisions of Alabama's House Bill 56, the "Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act" (H.B. 56). The stated purpose of the legislation was to discourage illegal immigration within the state and maximize enforcement of federal immigration laws through cooperation with federal authorities. The court found that the United States was likely to succeed on the merits of its challenges to sections 10, 11(a), 13(a), 16, 17, and 27 of H.B. 56. The court agreed with the United States that it was not likely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to section 12(a) or section 18 at this time. The court also found that the United States had not shown at this stage that it was likely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to section 30. Finally, the court dismissed the United States' appeal as to section 28 as moot, as the court's opinion in the private plaintiffs' companion case fully disposed of that issue.

Defendants appealed the district court's order granting plaintiffs' motion and preliminarily enjoined enforcement of sections 7 and 8 of House Bill 87, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011 (H.B. 87), on the ground that each was preempted by federal law. H.B. 87 was enacted to address the problem of illegal immigration within the state. The court held that section 7 could not be reconciled with the federal immigration scheme or the individual provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part the district court's order preliminarily enjoining enforcement of section 7. The court reversed in part the portion of that order enjoining section 8.