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Federal and local defendants in a case involving noncitizen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees at the Clay County Jail are again asking a federal court to dismiss claims.
The detainees filed the lawsuit last year, alleging in part that the Clay County Jail is using ICE funding to operate as a “cash cow.” The complaint alleged that detention standards were failing at the jail and that county and ICE officials colluded to make sure the jail didn’t get a failing grade from an inspection, as it would’ve ended their contract.
The Indiana Southern District Court previously dismissed most of the claims for relief but ruled that the former detainees have standing and that the federal agency’s performance evaluation of the jail constituted a final agency action.
The detainees filed an amended complaint, which ICE argues essentially restates claims that were already dismissed.
According to ICE’s memorandum in support of dismissal, Counts II, III and IV of the amended complaint are “substantially similar” to the original Count II, which challenged ICE’s continued payments to Clay County despite misuse of the funds.
The court previously dismissed Count II without prejudice.
The operative Counts II, III and IV “all suffer the same fatal defect as the original Count II,” ICE argued, referencing the court’s previous judgment that ICE’s decision not to suspend payments to Clay County is an unreviewable nonenforcement decision.
In part, ICE argued that under the Administrative Procedure Act, a plaintiff must show that the action in question is in fact “agency action” — whether final or not — and the detainees failed to do so.
The Clay County defendants are also asking the court to dismiss the amended complaint.
In their brief in support of dismissal, the county defendants argued the plaintiffs don’t have a private right of action to bring Count V under Indiana law or the jail handbook. Count V alleges the county violated its own policy and state law for noncitizens detained at the jail.
“The statutory scheme at issue does not provide an explicit cause of action to detainees, it prohibits detainee lawsuits to challenge jail inspections, and it contains an enforcement mechanism that does not involve detainee lawsuits,” the county argued in part.
The county made a similar argument for Count VI, which alleges Clay County violated various Office of Management and Budget regulations.
But neither the regulations nor the federal statutes cited in the amended complaint “even arguably create a private right of action,” according to the county.
Meanwhile, the Indiana Southern District Court denied as moot the plaintiffs’ substitute motion for class certification.
While the defendants’ original motions to dismiss were pending, the plaintiffs filed a notice of withdrawal for one of the named plaintiffs, which the court approved.
In February, plaintiffs Maribel Xirum, Javier Jaimes Jaimes and Baijebo Toe filed an instant motion to certify a class of “all persons who are currently or will be detained by Defendant U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Clay County Jail pursuant to Rule 23(a) and (b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.”
Then came the amended complaint.
“Instead of bifurcating the issue of class certification, the Court concludes that class certification as to all claims, including those that survived dismissal, should be resolved in a renewed motion for class certification,” the order from Chief Judge Tanya Walton Pratt says.
The plaintiffs have 45 days from the date of the order, June 27, to file a renewed motion for class certification as to all claims asserted in the amended complaint.
The case is Xirum, et al. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), et al., 1:22-cv-00801.
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