Ninth Circuit Authorizes Bivens Claim Against ICE Official for Forging Doc in Deportation Case

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

The Ninth Circuit last week authorized a constitutional tort under Bivens against an ICE official for forging a document that would have led to the plaintiff's deportation. (H/t Theo Lesczynski.) The ruling means that the plaintiff's case can move forward.

The ruling is the second time in recent weeks that the Ninth Circuit authorized a Bivens action in a "new context." (The earlier case involved a Border Patrol officer's cross-border shooting of a Mexican youth.)

The case, Lanuza v. Love, arose when ICE Assistant Chief Counsel Jonathan Love submitted an I-826 form, forged with Lanuza's signature, at Lanuza's immigration hearing. The form indicated that Lanuza accepted voluntary departure to Mexico in 2000, breaking Lanuza's period of accrued continuous residency in the U.S. Without this continuous residency, Lanuza didn't qualify for cancellation of removal; and, based on the forged document, the immigration judge denied cancellation and ordered Lanuza removed. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed.

Lanuza then hired a new attorney, who discovered the forgery. (Among other things, the forged document referred to the "U.S. Department of Homeland Security," which did not yet exist at the time that Lanuza purportedly signed the form.) The agency then adjusted Lanuza's status to lawful permanent resident.

Lanuza brought a Bivens claim against Love for violation of his Fifth Amendment rights. The district court dismissed the case, but the Ninth Circuit reversed.

The court ruled that the case raised a "new context," but that no special factors counseled against a Bivens remedy. Indeed, the court said that certain factors favored a Bivens remedy in a case like this, where a government official submitted false evidence in a quasi-judicial proceeding:

Indeed, there are few persons better equipped to weigh the cost of compromised adjudicative proceedings than those who are entrusted with protecting their integrity. And, more often than not, the Judicial Branch, not Congress or the Executive, is responsible for remedying circumstances where a court's integrity is compromised by the submission of false evidence. Thus, it falls within the natural ambit of the judiciary's authority to decide whether to provide a remedy for the submission of false evidence in an immigration proceeding.

The court also denied qualified immunity.

The ruling sends the case back to the district court for proceedings on the merits.