Vega Duron v. Johnson

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of an action, based on lack of subject matter jurisdiction, brought by children to halt the deportation of their father. The children argued that their father's deportation was arbitrary and violated their rights to familial association under the First and Fifth Amendments, and that his selective removal was because of his Hispanic origin and violated the equal-protection aspect of the Fifth Amendment.The court held that the children's familial-association claim raised a legal question squarely within 8 U.S.C. 1252(b)(9), which operated as an unmistakable zipper clause designed to consolidate and channel review of all legal and factual questions that arose from the removal of an alien through the preordained administrative process. Consequently, because the familial-association question reached the courts outside the prescribed administrative process, this court had no jurisdiction to consider it. The court also held that the children's selective-enforcement claim concerned how the Government chose to enforce already-issued removal orders. Therefore, these claims arose from a decision to execute removal orders and 8 U.S.C. 1252(g) generally barred judicial review of such claims. View "Vega Duron v. Johnson" on Justia Law