On January 17, 2018, two immigrants who had been denied bond hearing by judges in the Charlotte Immigration Court filed this putative class-action lawsuit in the US. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. The plaintiffs sued three judges on the Charlotte Immigration Court and federal officials at the Mecklenburg County Jail Central. The plaintiffs -- represented by the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition, the American Immigration Council, and private counsel -- sought injunctive relief, claiming violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act, Administrative Procedure Act, and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The plaintiffs alleged that judges at the Charlotte Immigration Court declined to exercise jurisdiction over bond hearings by detainees who were transferred by the Department of Homeland Security to a location outside of North or South Carolina before the bond hearing.

Specifically, the plaintiffs alleged that three Immigration Judges (IJs) refused to hold bond hearings, rubber stamping any bond hearing requests for detainees with a stamp that read “the Court declines to exercise its authority.” This forced the plaintiffs into longer periods of incarceration before they could get a bond hearing with a different judge. This was made possible by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) policy of transferring detainees out of North and South Carolina only after the detainees had filed bond hearing requests. Both detainees were released on bond after appearing before a judge in Lumpkin, Georgia. The plaintiffs sought class certification for other detainees who had filed bond hearing requests before these three IJs.

On April 12, 2018, the federal defendants filed a motion to dismiss. The defendants alleged that the court did not have subject matter jurisdiction over the case and that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they were released from detention in Georgia. Magistrate Judge David S. Cayer believed the plaintiffs had standing to sue, but recommended that the motion to dismiss be granted because the court did not have subject matter jurisdiction over IJs' discretionary decisions under 8 U.S.C. §§ 1226(e) and 1252(a)(2)(B)(ii). 2018 WL 6333706. Only the issue of subject matter jurisdiction was contested by the plaintiffs before District Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr., who adopted the Magistrate Judge’s findings and granted the motion to dismiss. Judge Conrad also denied the plaintiff’s motion to certify the class as moot. 2018 WL 4693809. On November 16, 2018, the plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal to the 4th Circuit. Oral argument has been tentatively scheduled for December 2019.

Olivia Wheeling - 09/25/2019


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