Vasquez v. Reno

Page 688

233 F.3d 688 (1st Cir. 2000)

FRANCISCO VASQUEZ, Petitioner, Appellant, v. JANET RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL; DORIS MEISSNER, COMMISSIONER OF THE IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE; AND STEVEN J. FARQUHARSON, DISTRICT DIRECTOR, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE (BOSTON), Respondents, Appellees.

No. 00-1505.

United States Court of Appeals, For the First Circuit.

Heard November 6, 2000.

Decided December 8, 2000.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS.

Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge.

James C. Dragon, with whom Edward Hart and Law Office of James C. Dragon P.C. were on brief, for petitioner.

Brenda M. O'Malley, Attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation, U.S. Dep't of Justice, with whom David W. Ogden, Acting Assistant Attorney General, and Terri J. Scadron, Senior Litigation Counsel, were on brief, for respondents.

Before Selya, Boudin and Stahl, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

We are called upon to decide an important question of first impression at the appellate level: Is the Attorney General of the United States the custodian of an alien being held at a federal detention facility (and therefore a proper respondent to that alien's petition for a writ of habeas corpus)? We conclude that, as a general rule, the Attorney General is neither the custodian of such an alien in the requisite sense nor the proper respondent to a habeas petition. Since this case falls squarely within that general rule, we vacate the district court's merits-based opinion, Vasquez v. Reno, 97 F. Supp. 2d 142 (D. Mass. 2000), and remand with instructions to dismiss or transfer the petition.

I. BACKGROUND

The essential facts are undisputed. The petitioner, Francisco Vasquez, is a citizen of the Dominican Republic who lawfully entered the United States in 1987 and eventually established a domicile in Massachusetts. In 1993, a Massachusetts state court found him guilty of knowingly receiving stolen property, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 266, 60, and sentenced him to a term of immurement. Following the petitioner's release from prison, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) took steps to deport him on the basis of that conviction.

The INS detained the petitioner in Boston and then transferred him to the Federal Detention Center, Oakdale, Louisiana (FDC-Oakdale). Following a hearing, an immigration judge ordered him returned to the Dominican Republic. He appealed unsuccessfully to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Facing imminent removal, the petitioner filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. 2241, in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He named as respondents the Attorney General of the United States, the Commissioner of the INS, and the district director of the INS's Boston office. He did not name the district director having day-to-day control over FDC-Oakdale, presumably because that individual is stationed in New Orleans and, thus, beyond the reach of the Massachusetts district court's in personam jurisdiction.

The respondents moved to dismiss the petition on myriad grounds. The district court found that it had subject matter jurisdiction to review the removal order. Vasquez, 97 F. Supp. 2d at 148. It further found that it had personal jurisdiction over the three named respondents, that the Attorney General was the person who had the petitioner "in custody" for habeas purposes,¹ and that venue was properly laid in the District of Massachusetts. Id. at 149-53. But the court denied on the merits the petitioner's claim that he was eligible for a waiver of deportation under a now-repealed section of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Id. at 154.

On appeal, the petitioner asks us to reverse this merits-based decision. The respondents defend it. As a threshold matter, however, they assert that we should not reach the merits inasmuch as the lower court (1) lacked subject matter jurisdiction, (2) lacked personal jurisdiction over the only proper respondent (i.e., the INS official who directly supervises FDC-Oakdale), and/or (3) lacked proper venue. We reject the first of these threshold assertions out of hand. See Mahadeo v. Reno, 226 F.3d 3, 10 (1st Cir. 2000) (holding that district courts continue to have subject matter jurisdiction in alien cases under 28 U.S.C. 2241, notwithstanding the enactment of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009, 3546 (codified as amended in scattered sections of the United States Code)). But we find the respondents' second assertion persuasive: in our view, the case cannot proceed due to the petitioner's failure to name his true custodian (the INS district director for Louisiana) as the respondent to his petition. Accordingly, we have no need to mull the other issues raised by the parties.

II. THE LEGAL LANDSCAPE

Congress has stipulated that a writ of habeas corpus granted by a district court "shall be directed to the person having custody of the person detained." 28 U.S.C. 2243. This means, of course, that the court issuing the writ must have personal jurisdiction over the person who holds the petitioner in custody. Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court, 410 U.S. 484, 495 (1973); United States v. Barrett, 178 F.3d 34, 50 n.10 (1st Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 120 S. Ct. 1208 (2000); Guerra v. Meese, 786 F.2d 414, 415 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (per curiam). Jurisdiction over the custodian is paramount because "[t]he writ of habeas corpus does not act upon the prisoner who seeks relief, but upon the person who holds him in what is alleged to be unlawful custody." Braden, 410 U.S. at 494-95.

Although clearly articulating the baseline requirement of jurisdiction over the custodian, the Braden Court provided limited guidance for determining the identity of the custodian in any given case. Other Supreme Court precedents are equally inscrutable on this point. The courts of appeals have been more forthcoming. They have held with echolalic regularity that a prisoner's proper custodian for purposes of habeas review is the warden of the facility where he is being held. E.g., Brittingham v. United States, 982 F.2d 378, 379 (9th Cir. 1992) (per curiam); Blango v. Thornburgh, 942 F.2d 1487, 1491-92 (10th Cir. 1991) (per curiam); Brennan v. Cunningham, 813 F.2d 1, 12 (1st Cir. 1987); Monk v. Secretary of Navy, 793 F.2d 364, 368-69 (D.C. Cir. 1986); Guerra, 786 F.2d at 416; Billiteri v. United States Bd. of Parole, 541 F.2d 938, 948 (2d Cir. 1976); United States v. DiRusso, 535 F.2d 673, 676 (1st Cir. 1976); Jones v. Biddle, 131 F.2d 853, 854 (8th Cir. 1942). The warden is the proper custodian because he has day-to-day control over the petitioner and is able to produce the latter before the habeas court. Blango, 942 F.2d at 1492 n.10; Guerra, 786 F.2d at 416.

In the prisoner context, a number of courts have specifically rejected the argument that a petitioner's proper custodian for habeas purposes is the Attorney General. E.g., Blango, 942 F.2d at 1491-92; Sanders v. Bennett, 148 F.2d 19, 20 (D.C. Cir. 1945); Jones, 131 F.2d at 854; Connally v. Reno, 896 F. Supp. 32, 35 (D.D.C. 1995); De Maris v. United States, 187 F. Supp. 273, 275-76 (S.D. Ind. 1960). These courts reason that while the Attorney General is the ultimate overseer of all federal prisoners, see 18 U.S.C. 4001(2), she is not responsible for day-to-day prison operations and does not hold prisoners in actual physical custody. Consequently, a demand to produce the body of the prisoner is more logically directed to the person who does have day-to-day control and actual physical custody, namely, the warden.² Given this solid wall of authority and the impeccable logic that supports it, we consider it settled beyond cavil that when a prisoner petitions for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2241, he must name as the respondent the superintendent of the facility in which he is being held.

Notwithstanding this uniform view, the case law concerning the identity of the proper respondent to habeas petitions brought by detained aliens is much more sparse and far less coherent. On the only occasion when the question of whether the Attorney General is a proper respondent to an alien habeas petition surfaced in the Supreme Court, the Justices adroitly sidestepped it. See Ahrens v. Clark, 335 U.S. 188, 193 (1948). In dictum, two courts of appeals have addressed -- but stopped short of authoritatively answering -- the question. ³ In Yi v. Maugans, 24 F.3d 500 (3d Cir. 1994), the Third Circuit quickly dismissed the idea that the Attorney General might be a proper respondent in an alien habeas case. The court reasoned that the existence of a power to release cannot definitively determine the identity of the proper custodian, "[o]therwise, the Attorney General of the United States could be considered the custodian of every alien and prisoner in custody because ultimately she controls the district directors and the prisons." Id. at 507. The Second Circuit pondered the problem at greater length, reviewed the arguments pro and con, and manifested some uncertainty as to the answer. See Henderson v. INS, 157 F.3d 106, 124-28 (2d Cir. 1998). In the end, however, the court determined that it could leave the conundrum unsolved. Id. at 128.

Several trial courts have tackled this question, but their decisions are in considerable disarray. One line of cases, conceived and nurtured primarily in the Eastern District of New York, holds that the Attorney General is a proper respondent to an alien habeas petition. This notion had a modest beginning. In the seminal case, the court acknowledged the existence of "compelling reasons of policy why the Attorney General should not normally be regarded as the custodian of a habeas petitioner." Nwankwo v. Reno, 828 F. Supp. 171, 173-74 (E.D.N.Y. 1993). Withal, the court remarked the heavy crush of deportation proceedings in the Western District...