COVID-19 Summary: This is a habeas action brought by medically vulnerable detainees in the Etowah County Detention Center, seeking release due to COVID-19 and lack of protection from the virus in the facility. On May 15, the court denied entry of a TRO and a month later, the plaintiffs dismissed the case voluntarily.
The Initial Lawsuit: This case was originally filed as a petition for writ of habeas corpus on March 5, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. It was assigned to Judge Abdul K. Kallon and given the docket number 4:20-cv-00596. The petitioner challenged his detention by ICE as being in violation of his substantive and procedural due process rights and contrary to the Supreme Court's 2001 decision in
Zadvydas. Then, on April 29, 2020, the petitioner and seventeen other detainees in the Etowah County Detention Center filed amended petition for writ of habeas corpus. The claims were drastically different, and with seventeen new plaintiffs involved, the court felt that the petitioners were simply trying to avoid randomization of assignments to judges by adding unrelated claims and new petitioners to the original complaint. Therefore, the court ordered the clerk to open a new case for this new complaint. It was assigned to Judge R. David Proctor and referred to Magistrate Judge John H. England III, and its new docket number was 4:20-cv-00304. Regarding the original case, Judge Kallon gave the petitioner until May 7 to file respond the the defendants' answer in that case. That docket is not available online, so the Clearinghouse does not know whether it was dismissed or continued on.
The New Lawsuit: Represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers' Guild, and private counsel, the plaintiffs sued Etowah County, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the New Orleans ICE Field Office. Suing under the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 701 and the federal habeas statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2241, the plaintiffs alleged violations of the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Specifically, they alleged that their underlying medical conditions made them more vulnerable to COVID-19 and that their continued detention was unconstitutional.
Simultaneous with the petition, the plaintiffs filed a motion for temporary restraining order, arguing that the court had the authority to do so, that the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm without it, that they were likely to succeed on the merits, and that the balance of equities weighed in their favor. The defendants filed a response in opposition on May 4, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction, that the plaintiffs had not shown irreparable harm, nor had they proved deliberate indifference. For petitioners to succeed. defendants argued, they had to show that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to the petitioners' rights.
Over the next few weeks, one petitioner was granted release by ICE, and his habeas petition and motion for temporary restraining order were dismissed as moot.
On May 15, Judge Proctor denied the TRO, stating that the plaintiffs could not modify their conditions of confinement through § 2241, and that the release order they sought had not been granted by other courts, even where the risk posed to detainees was even more prevalent. According to Judge Proctor, habeas corpus is a vehicle by which petitioners are to challenge that they are imprisoned or the length of their imprisonment, but not the conditions of their imprisonment. 2020 WL 2513648.
On June 19, the plaintiffs moved to voluntarily dismiss the case, which was granted three days later. The case is now closed.
Jack Hibbard - 08/10/2020
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