Immigration Law - Enforcing Administrative Exhaustion Requirements for Pattern-And-Practice Claims Concerning Due Process Violations During Immigration Raids - Aguilar V. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement‪.‬

Immigration statutes have traditionally contained provisions that limit federal district court jurisdiction over administrative appeals and require individuals to exhaust administrative remedies before seeking judicial review of immigration claims. (1) As in other areas of administrative law, courts have considered such provisions and determined the circumstances in which the court should waive exhaustion requirements and extend judicial review. (2) The REAL ID Act of 2005, one of the most recent immigration statutes, requires administrative exhaustion and significantly limits judicial review of claims "arising" from immigration removal proceedings. (3) In Aguilar v. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (4) the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit addressed class-wide claims that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a pattern and practice of violating aliens' due process right to counsel during large scale immigration raids. (5) The First Circuit considered whether such pattern-and-practice claims "arise" from removal proceedings, thus triggering the REAL ID Act's provisions, and whether enforcing the provisions would foreclose the opportunity for meaningful judicial review. (6) The court held that although framed as a pattern-and-practice action, the underlying right-to-counsel claims "arose" from removal, and that the court could enforce the REAL ID Act without foreclosing meaningful judicial review of those claims. (7) On March 6, 2007, ICE officials executed an immigration enforcement raid at a leather factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts where they detained several hundred undocumented aliens and held them at Ft. Devens immigration holding facility in Ayer, Massachusetts. (8) The petitioners claimed that following the raid, ICE denied access to several volunteer attorneys who arrived at the holding facility to offer legal services. (9) They also claimed that two days later, ICE transferred several aliens to detention facilities in Texas, where they had no opportunity for legal advice. (10) According to the petitioners, ICE's actions during the raid were part of a systematic tactic to interfere with exiting attorney-client relationships and to hinder their ability to retain lawyers. (11) The petitioners alleged that ICE's tactics violated their due process right to counsel. (12)