John Doe v. Merrick Garland

                 FOR PUBLICATION

   UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
        FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

JOHN DOE,                                  No. 23-15361

          Petitioner-Appellee,               D.C. No.
                                         3:22-cv-03759-JD
 v.

MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney                OPINION
General; ALEJANDRO N.
MAYORKAS; TAE JOHNSON, in his
official capacity, Acting Director for
U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement; POLLY KAISER, in her
official capacity, Acting Director for
the San Francisco ICE Field Office;
MOISES BECERRA,

          Respondents-Appellants.

       Appeal from the United States District Court
          for the Northern District of California
         James Donato, District Judge, Presiding

           Argued and Submitted May 16, 2024
                San Francisco, California

                   Filed July 29, 2024
2                         DOE V. GARLAND


     Before: Kenneth K. Lee and Daniel A. Bress, Circuit
          Judges, and Yvette Kane,* District Judge.

                     Opinion by Judge Kane


                          SUMMARY**


                      Habeas/Immigration

    The panel reversed the district court’s denial of
Respondents’ motion to dismiss and remanded to the district
court with instructions to vacate the grant of the habeas
petition filed by John Doe, a detained alien.
    Doe brought his habeas petition pursuant to 

 in the Northern District of California, contesting his
detention at the Golden State Annex (“GSA”) and naming as
Respondents Attorney General Merrick Garland and other
federal officials. After the district court granted Doe’s
petition, an immigration judge held a bond hearing, and Doe
was released from custody.
    The panel held that the district court erred in exercising
jurisdiction over Doe’s habeas petition because Doe failed
to name his immediate custodian as respondent and filed the
petition outside the district of his confinement. The panel
explained that, under Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 

*
 The Honorable Yvette Kane, United States District Judge for the
Middle District of Pennsylvania, sitting by designation.
**
  This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
                        DOE V. GARLAND                        3


(2004), when a § 2241 habeas petitioner challenges his
present physical confinement—which the Supreme Court
labeled a core challenge—he should name his warden as
respondent and file the petition in the district of confinement.
    Addressing the principal question of whether Padilla’s
rules for core habeas petitions applied to Doe, the panel
concluded that Doe’s petition was a core habeas petition.
The panel explained that Doe sought typical habeas relief in
asking for his release should Respondents fail to provide him
with a bond hearing.
    Next, the panel concluded that Doe failed to name the
proper respondent to his core habeas petition because he did
not name his immediate custodian, the Facility
Administrator (and de facto warden) of the GSA. The panel
also concluded that Doe failed to file his petition in the
proper judicial district because he was confined at the GSA
in the Eastern District of California, but filed his petition in
the Northern District of California.
4                     DOE V. GARLAND


                       COUNSEL

Jordan Wells (argued), Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights
of the San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco, California,
for Petitioner-Appellee.
Shiwon Choe (argued) and Savith Iyengar, Assistant United
States Attorneys; Michelle Lo, Civil Division Chief; Ismail
J. Ramsey, United States Attorney; United States
Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorney,
San Francisco, California; Courtney E. Moran and Erin T.
Ryan, Trial Attorneys; William C. Peachey, Director; Brian
M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General;
United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, Office
of Immigration Litigation, Washington, D.C.; for
Respondents-Appellants.
Marc Van Der Hout and Johnny Sinodis, Van Der Hout LLP,
San Francisco, California; Trina A. Realmuto, Kristin
Macleod-Ball, and Aidan Langston, National Immigration
Litigation Alliance, Brookline, Massachusetts; for Amici
Curiae The National Immigration Litigation Alliance,
Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Immigrant
Legal Defense, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-
Asian Law Caucus.
Michelle (Minju) Y. Cho, and Bree Bernwanger, American
Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California,
San Francisco, California, for Amici Curiae American Civil
Liberties Union of Northern California, American Civil
Liberties Union of Southern California, The American
Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, and Pangea Legal
Services.
                         DOE V. GARLAND                           5


                           OPINION

KANE, District Judge:

    John Doe (“Doe”), an alien detained pursuant to 

(c), brought a petition for writ of habeas corpus
pursuant to 

 in the Northern District of
California. Doe contested his detention at the Golden State
Annex (“GSA”), which is located in the Eastern District of
California. Doe named Attorney General Merrick Garland,
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejando
Mayorkas, then Acting Director for United States
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) Tae
Johnson, and then Acting Director for the San Francisco ICE
Field Office Polly Kaiser, as Respondents (“Respondents”).1
The district court denied Respondents’ motion to dismiss on
jurisdictional grounds and granted Doe’s petition. However,
because Doe did not name his immediate custodian, the
Facility Administrator (and de facto warden) of GSA as the
respondent, and because he filed his complaint outside of the
judicial district where he was confined, we hold that the
district court erroneously exercised jurisdiction over his
petition.
    We therefore REVERSE the district court’s denial of
Respondents’ motion to dismiss and REMAND this case to
the district court with instructions to VACATE the grant of
Doe’s petition for writ of habeas corpus.




1
 During the pendency of this appeal, Moises Becerra was appointed as
Field Office Director for the ICE San Francisco Field Office, as
successor to Acting Director Polly Kaiser.
6                       DOE V. GARLAND


                      I. Background
    On July 12, 2021, Doe began his detention at GSA
pursuant to 

(c), which requires that the
Attorney General take civil custody of criminal aliens
detained pending removal without requiring a showing that
the detainees pose a danger to the public or are a flight risk.

(c). Following a prolonged period during
which he did not receive a bond hearing, on June 24, 2022,
Doe filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United
States District Court for the Northern District of California.
He named as Respondents Merrick B. Garland, the Attorney
General of the United States; Alejandro Mayorkas, the
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; Tae
Johnson, then Acting Director for United States Immigration
and Customs Enforcement; and Polly Kaiser, then Acting
Director for the San Francisco ICE Field Office, all in their
official capacities. In his petition, Doe requested “that this
Court issue a writ of habeas corpus and order his release
within fourteen days unless Respondents schedule a hearing
before an immigration judge.” Doe sought a bond hearing,
requesting that the district court order Respondents to
establish “by clear and convincing evidence” that he presents
a flight risk or danger to the public, and, if Respondents
could not meet their burden at said hearing, that an
immigration judge order his release “on appropriate
conditions of supervision, taking into account his ability to
pay a bond.”
    Respondents moved to dismiss Doe’s petition,
challenging jurisdiction in the Northern District of
California. The district court denied Respondents’ motion
in a summary order, holding that “[t]he Court has concluded
in prior immigration habeas cases that the Northern District
of California is an appropriate jurisdiction for petitions filed
                       DOE V. GARLAND                       7


by aliens detained by the Director of the San Francisco ICE
Field Office.” On the merits, the district court granted Doe’s
petition, ordering the government to release Doe from
custody or provide him an individualized bond hearing
within thirty-one (31) days of the date of the court’s order.
In accordance with the district court’s order, the government
scheduled a bond hearing. At that hearing, the immigration
judge issued a decision releasing Doe on $7,500 bond and
Doe was released from ICE custody. Respondents appeal to
this court the orders of the Northern District of California
denying their motion to dismiss and granting Doe’s habeas
petition.
                  II. Standard of Review
    This court has jurisdiction over the district court’s
decision denying Respondents’ motion to dismiss and
granting Doe’s habeas petition pursuant to 

.
The court reviews jurisdictional questions de novo. United
States v. Jeremiah, 

 (9th Cir. 2007); see
also Nettles v. Grounds, 

 (9th Cir. 2016)
(reviewing de novo a district court’s finding that it lacked
jurisdiction over a habeas petition).
                       III. Analysis
   A. Rules Governing § 2241 Petitions
    Doe filed his habeas petition in the Northern District of
California pursuant to 

. The federal habeas
statute, § 2241, provides in relevant part that:

       [w]rits of habeas corpus may be granted by
       the Supreme Court, any justice thereof, the
       district courts and any circuit judge within
       their respective jurisdictions. The order of a
8                      DOE V. GARLAND


       circuit judge shall be entered in the records of
       the district court of the district wherein the
       restraint complained of is had.

(a).
    The seminal case interpreting and clarifying the
jurisdictional bounds of § 2241 is the United States Supreme
Court’s decision in Rumsfeld v. Padilla. In Padilla,
petitioner Jose Padilla was detained by the United States
Department of Defense following President George W.
Bush’s determination that Padilla was an “enemy
combatant” who conspired with Al-Qaeda to perpetuate
terror attacks on the United States. See Rumsfeld v. Padilla,

 (2004). Padilla was detained by federal
agents at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and
subsequently transported to New York after agents executed
a material witness warrant issued by the United States
District Court for the Southern District of New York. 

 at
430–31. He moved to vacate the warrant, but while his
motion was pending, President Bush ordered Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld to designate Padilla an enemy combatant
and take him into military custody. 

. Padilla was
taken into custody by officials of the United States
Department of Defense and transferred to the Consolidated
Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina. 

. His
counsel then filed a petition for habeas corpus pursuant to 

 in the Southern District of New York, naming
as respondents President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, and
Commander of the Consolidated Naval Brig Melanie A.
Marr. 

    In finding that the district court in the Southern District
of New York did not have jurisdiction over Padilla’s
petition, the Supreme Court highlighted several important
                          DOE V. GARLAND                           9


rules. First, the Court noted that in the federal habeas statute,

, “[t]he consistent use of the definite article
in reference to the custodian indicates that there is generally
only one proper respondent to a given prisoner’s habeas
petition. This custodian, moreover, is ‘the person’ with the
ability to produce the prisoner’s body before the habeas
court.” 

 at 434–35. The Court next clarified that when a
habeas       petitioner    challenges      “present    physical
confinement,” which the Court labeled a “core challenge[],”
“the default rule is that the proper respondent is the warden
of the facility where the prisoner is being held, not the
Attorney General or some other remote supervisory
official.” 

.2 In addition to delineating the proper
respondent for core habeas petitions, the Court also
explained that “for core habeas petitions challenging present
physical confinement, jurisdiction lies in only one district:
the district of confinement.” 

. In short, and putting
the rules together, “[w]henever a § 2241 habeas petitioner
seeks to challenge his present physical custody within the
United States, he should name his warden as respondent and
file the petition in the district of confinement.” Id. at 447.
    The Padilla district of confinement and immediate
custodian rules are firmly entrenched in the law of this and
other circuits. See Lopez-Marroquin v. Barr, 

 (9th Cir. 2020) (applying the district of confinement rule
to a § 2241 petition involving a noncitizen’s challenge to his
immigration detention); see also Kholyavskiy v. Achim, 

, 948–54 (7th Cir. 2006) (applying the immediate


2
  When a habeas petitioner “challenges a form of ‘custody’ other than
present physical confinement,” the respondent can be “the entity or
person who exercises legal control with respect to the challenged
‘custody.’” Id. at 438.
10                         DOE V. GARLAND


custodian rule in rejecting the naming of the ICE Field
Office Director as the proper respondent to a habeas
petition); Anariba v. Dir. Hudson Cnty. Corr. Ctr., 

, 444–45 (3d Cir. 2021) (applying the district of
confinement and immediate custodian rules to a core habeas
petition challenging immigration detention).3
    These rules are the basis for Respondents’ challenge to
jurisdiction in the Northern District of California.
Respondents argued below that Doe should have named the
warden of GSA, his immediate custodian, as respondent to
his habeas petition. Respondents further argued that Doe
filed his petition outside of the district where he was
confined, thus rendering the Northern District of California’s
exercise of jurisdiction improper.
     The district court denied Respondents’ motion, noting in
its summary order that “[t]he Court has concluded in prior
immigration habeas cases that the Northern District of
California is an appropriate jurisdiction for petitions filed by
aliens detained by the Director of the San Francisco ICE
Field Office.” 4 On appeal, Respondents renew their

3
  Padilla denotes that compliance with the immediate custodian rule
generally requires petitioners to name the warden as a proper respondent.
See Padilla, 

. For ease of reference, we refer only to the
immediate custodian rule, not the warden as respondent rule.
4
 The district judge cited two of his prior rulings, Meneses v. Jennings,
No. 21-cv-07193, 

, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 14, 2021)
and Ahn v. Barr, No. 20-cv-02604, 

, at *2 (N.D. Cal.
May 4, 2020), in concluding that jurisdiction was proper in the Northern
District of California. Later decisions from other district courts in the
Northern District reveal an inconsistent approach to the jurisdictional
question raised here. Compare Doe v. Becerra, No. 23-cv-04767, 

 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 1, 2023) (exercising jurisdiction over a
habeas petition from a GSA detainee), with Rivera-Trigueros v. Becerra,
                          DOE V. GARLAND                            11


argument that under Padilla, Doe’s failure to name his
immediate custodian, the warden of GSA, as respondent to
his habeas petition, as well as his failure to file his petition
in the district of confinement, renders the district court’s
exercise of jurisdiction improper. In response, Doe argues
that his petition is a non-core habeas petition, but that even
if the court finds that Doe’s petition is a core habeas petition,
he named the proper respondent and filed his petition in the
proper judicial district, because there is no statutorily
required district of confinement rule.
    B. Doe’s Petition is a Core Habeas Petition
    In addressing the principal question of whether Padilla’s
rules for core habeas petitions apply to Doe, we turn first to
the language of Doe’s habeas petition, which requests:

        that this Court issue a writ of habeas corpus
        and order his release within fourteen days
        unless Respondents schedule a hearing
        before an immigration judge where: (1) to
        continue detention, the government must
        establish by clear and convincing evidence
        that Mr. Doe presents a risk of flight or
        danger; and (2) if the government cannot
        meet its burden, the immigration judge orders
        Mr. Doe’s release on appropriate conditions




No. 23-cv-05781, 

 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 14, 2024)
(declining to exercise jurisdiction over a habeas petition from a GSA
detainee), and Alfaro-Ramirez v. Current or Acting Field Off. Dir., San
Francisco Field Off., No. 24-cv-00817, 

 (N.D. Cal.
Apr. 29, 2024) (same).
12                     DOE V. GARLAND


       of supervision, taking into account his ability
       to pay a bond.

    From the plain text of Doe’s petition, he seeks a writ of
habeas corpus and release order from the district court unless
Respondents provide him a bond hearing before an
immigration judge. Absent his requested bond hearing,
Doe’s petition requests that the district court “order his
release within fourteen days.”
    Yet, although maintaining that his petition is a proper
§ 2241 habeas petition, Doe asserts that the relief sought
takes his petition outside of Padilla’s rules. Doe emphasizes
that his petition merely sought a process remedy in the form
of an individualized bond hearing. Doe asks the court to
infer that, because he requested a bond hearing and made his
release from custody a conditional request—contingent on
receiving a bond hearing, then it follows that he was not truly
petitioning for release from custody and thus his petition
should be classified as a non-core habeas challenge. Doe
relies on Pinson v. Carvajal, in which this court held that
“claims that if successful would not necessarily lead to the
invalidity of the custody are not at the core of habeas
corpus,” and thus do not sound in habeas at all. 

 (9th Cir. 2023). In other words, claims not at the
“core of habeas corpus” are more appropriately initiated
pursuant to 

. See 

; Wilkinson v.
Dotson, 

 (2005) (explaining that “state
prisoners [should] use only habeas corpus (or similar state)
remedies when they seek to invalidate the duration of their
confinement—either directly through an injunction
compelling speedier release or indirectly through a judicial
determination that necessarily implies the unlawfulness of
the State’s custody”).
                       DOE V. GARLAND                       13


    Doe’s argument is counterintuitive and against the great
weight of Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit authority. First,
the conditional nature of the requested relief does not drive
our analysis. This court has acknowledged that “[i]n modern
practice . . . courts employ a conditional order of release in
appropriate circumstances, which orders the State to release
the petitioner unless the State takes some remedial action,
such as to retry (or resentence) the petitioner.” Harvest v.
Castro, 

, 741–42 (9th Cir. 2008). The Supreme
Court made a similar point in Herrera v. Collins, stating that
the “typical relief granted in federal habeas corpus is a
conditional order of release.” 

 (1993).
Accordingly, Doe seeks “typical habeas relief” in asking for
his release should Respondents fail to provide him with an
individualized bond hearing. 

    Doe relies primarily on Pinson and Nettles for the
proposition that, because he did not challenge the underlying
legal basis for his detention, but rather sought a process
remedy in the form of a bond hearing, it follows that his
petition falls within the “core of habeas” as defined in Pinson
but pursues non-core habeas relief as discussed in Padilla.
We are unpersuaded that either of those cases support such a
conclusion.
    Nettles and Pinson addressed the different question of
whether claims were cognizable in habeas at all. In Nettles,
an inmate pursued habeas relief following disciplinary
segregation and the loss of good time credit. See Nettles,

. The petitioner sought to expunge a rules
violation report and restore the good time credit, and this
court accordingly found that his claims “would not
necessarily lead to immediate or speedier release because the
expungement of the challenged disciplinary violation would
not necessarily lead to a grant of parole.” 

, 934–
14                     DOE V. GARLAND


35. Accordingly, the court determined that the petitioner’s
claim was not cognizable in habeas. See 

.
    Pinson solidified the rule that a habeas claim is one
challenging the fact of confinement, rather than the
conditions of confinement. In Pinson, two inmates sought
habeas relief, arguing that the conditions of their
incarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic violated the
Eighth Amendment. Pinson, 

. This court
rejected claimant Sands’s argument that only habeas relief
could ameliorate the harm inflicted on him by the
government’s ongoing failure to sufficiently treat his
underlying illnesses and protect him from exposure to the
coronavirus. 

, 1065–66, 1075. In so doing, this
court affirmed the district court’s dismissal of claimant
Sands’s habeas petition for lack of jurisdiction, delineating
that “the relevant question is whether, based on the
allegations in the petition, release is legally required
irrespective of the relief requested.” 

. In
dismissing the petition, this court concluded that claimant
Sands appeared to challenge only the conditions of his
confinement and not the underlying legal basis for that
confinement, and therefore his claim was “outside the core
of habeas.” 

. Pinson thus did the opposite of what
Doe asks for here: it dismissed his petition altogether. 

.
    Neither Pinson nor Nettles suggest that Doe’s petition is
a non-core habeas petition under Padilla. To the contrary,
the text of Doe’s petition indicates that his petition pursues
habeas relief and is an attack on his present physical
confinement at GSA, not a future restraint on his freedom.
Accordingly, Doe’s petition falls within Pinson’s “core of
habeas” (as a cognizable habeas petition) and is also a core
habeas petition under Padilla (as challenging his present
                        DOE V. GARLAND                       15


physical confinement). We next examine whether Doe
named the proper respondent to his core habeas petition, as
well as whether he filed his petition in the proper judicial
district.
    C. The District Court Erred in                 Exercising
       Jurisdiction Over Doe’s Petition.
        1. Doe Failed to Name His Immediate Custodian,
           the Facility Administrator and De Facto
           Warden of GSA, as Respondent.
    Upon initiating his core habeas petition in the Northern
District of California, Doe failed to name the Facility
Administrator of GSA as Respondent. For the reasons that
follow, Doe’s failure to name the Facility Administrator
renders the district court’s exercise of jurisdiction erroneous.
    “[O]ur inquiry begins with the statutory text, and ends
there as well if the text is unambiguous.” BedRoc Ltd., LLC
v. United States, 

 (2004). Section 2241 of
Title 28 of the United States Code is followed by the
implementing provision, Section 2242. Section 2242 states
that habeas petitions “shall allege the facts concerning the
applicant’s commitment or detention, the name of the person
who has custody over him and by virtue of what claim or
authority, if known.” 

 (emphasis added).
The plain text of the federal habeas implementation
provision delineates that petitions must include the name of
“the” person maintaining custody over the petitioner, 

implying that there is typically only one proper respondent
to a habeas petition. See Padilla, 

 (stating
that “[t]he consistent use of the definite article in reference
to the custodian indicates that there is generally only one
proper respondent to a given prisoner’s habeas petition”).
Section 2243, which governs issuance of the writ, states that
16                     DOE V. GARLAND


“[t]he writ, or order to show cause shall be directed to the
person having custody of the person detained.” 

 (emphasis added). Not unlike 

,
Congress chose to use a definite article, “the,” to make clear
that only one person can be said to maintain custody over the
detained petitioner, and that person is the proper respondent
to a core habeas challenge. See Padilla, 542 U.S. at 434–35;
see also United States v. Lopez, 

 (9th Cir.
2021) (stating that “definite articles like ‘the’ restrict the
noun that follows as particularized in scope or previously
specified by context”). Accordingly, Padilla explained
definitively who that one proper respondent is: “in habeas
challenges to present physical confinement—‘core
challenges’—the default rule is that the proper respondent is
the warden of the facility where the prisoner is being held,
not the Attorney General or some other remote supervisory
official.” See Padilla, 

.
    Footnote eight in Padilla does not affect the application
of the immediate custodian rule for core habeas petitions
filed by immigrant detainees. Doe argues that footnote eight
hints that the immediate custodian rule may not apply to
alien detainees because the Court left open the question of
“whether the Attorney General is a proper respondent to a
habeas petition filed by an alien detained pending
deportation.” Footnote eight cites six cases addressing the
question of the proper respondent to an immigrant’s habeas
petition. Those cases, decided prior to the 2005 enactment
of the REAL ID Act, were analyzed under a statutory scheme
that allowed orders of removal to be challenged through
habeas petitions. See Singh v. Gonzales, 

(9th Cir. 2007). All but one held that the Attorney General
was not a proper respondent. See Padilla, 

                           DOE V. GARLAND                             17


n.8.5    Armentero v. Immigration and Naturalization
Services—the only case holding that the Attorney General
was a proper respondent—was subsequently withdrawn.
See Armentero v. I.N.S., 

 (9th Cir. 2003), reh’g
granted, opinion withdrawn, 

 (9th Cir.
2004), opinion after grant of reh’g, 

 (9th Cir.
2005). Other than Armentero, the cases cited in footnote
eight “were challenges to removal/deportation orders and
not to present physical confinement.” Armentero, 

 n.17 (Berzon, J., dissenting). Footnote eight at most
suggests that when an alien’s habeas petition does not
present a core habeas challenge under Padilla, the Attorney
General may be a proper respondent. Cf. Padilla, 

 (“We have never intimated that a habeas petitioner
could name someone other than his immediate physical
custodian as respondent simply because the challenged
physical custody does not arise out of a criminal
conviction.”).
    Doe’s alternative argument is equally without support.
Doe asserts that in naming the officials that he did, namely
the Field Office Director of ICE, he has functionally named
his immediate custodian because the Field Office Director
retains the ultimate supervisory authority over detainees at
the GSA. But for core habeas petitions, Padilla expressly
“reaffirm[ed] that the immediate custodian, not a
supervisory official who exercises legal control, is the proper
respondent.” 

; see also 

 at 440 n.13
(“[T]he proper respondent is the person responsible for


5
 To be precise, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
did not hold that the Attorney General was not a proper respondent, but
instead “reserved judgment” on the issue. See Padilla, 

n.8 (citing Henderson v. I.N.S., 

 (2d Cir. 1998)).
18                      DOE V. GARLAND


maintaining—not       authorizing—the       custody     of   the
prisoner.”).
    Doe further asserts that “where the custodian boards their
prisoners at a contract facility, the proper respondent to a
habeas petition challenging such detention is the custodian
imposing the detention, not the custodian’s mere agent in
carrying it out.” Doe cites Fest v. Bartee and Dunne v.
Henman, two pre-Padilla opinions by this court, in arguing
that the private contract warden is not Doe’s immediate
custodian and that Doe named his true immediate custodian,
the ICE Field Office Director, as respondent.
    Fest and Dunne are inapposite for several reasons. As
an initial matter, both cases were decided years before the
Supreme Court’s decision in Rumsfeld v. Padilla. To the
extent that Fest and Dunne conflict with Padilla, Padilla
controls. See Miller v. Gammie, 

 (9th Cir.
2003) (en banc) (holding that “where the reasoning or theory
of our prior circuit authority is clearly irreconcilable with the
reasoning or theory of intervening higher authority, a three-
judge panel should consider itself bound by the later and
controlling authority”).
    Moreover, neither Fest nor Dunne direct us to reject the
rules governing § 2241 petitions set forth by the Supreme
Court in Padilla. This court’s analysis in Fest addressed the
operation of the agency provision of the Interstate
Corrections Compact, a factual predicate unrelated to the
present case. See Fest v. Bartee, 

 (9th Cir.
1986). Doe extrapolates from the agency analysis in Fest
and suggests that officials employed by The GEO Group
(“GEO”), who operate GSA, are mere agents of ICE and
unsuited to defend the government’s interests in keeping
Doe detained. This argument fails. Even in cases where
                        DOE V. GARLAND                       19


private contract wardens are named as respondents, the
government can and has stepped in to defend its interest in
keeping petitioners detained.          See 

(providing that “[t]he Solicitor General, or any officer of the
Department of Justice, may be sent by the Attorney General
to any State or district in the United States to attend to the
interests of the United States in a suit pending in a court of
the United States . . . .”); see also Smith v. Idaho, 

 (9th Cir. 2004) (noting that “the custodian is the
state’s agent” and must be “named as a respondent”); Stokes
v. U.S. Parole Comm’n, 

 (D.C. Cir.
2004) (holding that the proper respondent to the habeas
petition was the private contract warden of the Ohio facility
where petitioner was then detained); Freire v. Terry, 

 (S.D.N.Y. 2010) (providing an example
when the United States Attorney’s office stepped in to
defend a § 2241 petition on behalf of a private contract
warden).
    Dunne is equally unavailing because the petitioner filed
his § 2241 petition to attack a future sentence, not his present
physical confinement, rendering his petition a non-core
habeas petition under Padilla. See Dunne v. Henman, 

 (9th Cir. 1989). In short, neither Fest nor
Dunne provide the court with a reason to disregard Padilla’s
rule and to instead examine a petitioner’s “true” or
“functional” custodian. Under Padilla, Doe must name his
immediate custodian, the Facility Administrator of GSA, as
the respondent to his petition.
    Finally, Doe relies on Roman v. Ashcroft, 

(6th Cir. 2003), a Sixth Circuit case cited in Padilla footnote
eight, to support his position that the Field Office Director
of ICE could properly be named as respondent. In Roman,
the Sixth Circuit held that “a detained alien filing a habeas
20                     DOE V. GARLAND


corpus petition should generally name as a respondent the
person exercising daily control over his affairs” and that the
INS District Director could be a proper respondent, because
that official “has power over” the alien habeas petitioner.
340 F.3d at 320. However, under an earlier, pre-REAL ID
Act statutory scheme, the petitioner in Roman challenged a
removal order by an immigration judge, as well as the
immigration judge’s finding that he was statutorily ineligible
for discretionary relief pursuant to § 212(h) of the
Immigration and Nationality Act. Id. at 316. Accordingly,
because it did not attack his present physical confinement,
the petitioner’s habeas challenge was non-core. Roman has
no bearing here, where Doe’s petition challenges his present
physical confinement.
    Doe’s practical arguments fare no better. His suggestion
that the warden of GSA could not produce Doe before a
judicial tribunal finds no support in the record. Moreover,
this circuit and others have held that state and private
contract wardens retain the ability to produce habeas
petitioners in courts of law. See Brittingham v. United
States, 

 (9th Cir. 1992) (holding that the
warden of a California state prison was the proper
respondent to federal habeas petition); see also Anariba, 17
F.4th at 445–46 (requiring an ICE detainee to “adhere to the
immediate custodian rule” in filing his habeas petition);
Kholyavskiy, 

 (holding that petitioner’s
decision to name the Chicago ICE Field Office Director and
not the state prison warden as respondent to his habeas
petition was a jurisdictional defect); Stokes, 

(private contract warden was proper respondent). Doe
points to no appellate authority requiring that the respondent
to a federal habeas petition be a federal official, and we find
none.
                        DOE V. GARLAND                        21


    Padilla set forth a clear rule requiring core habeas
petitioners challenging their present physical confinement to
name their immediate custodian, the warden of the facility
where they are detained, as the respondent to their petition.
Padilla, 

. Doe did not adhere to this
requirement in failing to name the Facility Administrator,
who was the de facto warden of GSA, in his petition.
Accordingly, the district court erred in exercising
jurisdiction over Doe’s petition.
        2. Doe filed his petition outside of the district of
           confinement.
    The district court’s exercise of jurisdiction was also
improper because Doe was confined in the Eastern District
of California, not the Northern District of California, where
his petition was filed.
    The plain language of § 2241 authorizes judges to grant
habeas relief “within their respective jurisdictions.” 

(a). The implementation provision of the
federal habeas statute also specifies, as a default rule, that
there is only one proper judicial district for a habeas petition.
Section 2242 states that “[i]f addressed to the Supreme
Court, a justice thereof or a circuit judge it shall state the
reasons for not making application to the district court of the
district in which the applicant is held.” 

(emphasis added). This provision suggests that the only
federal court that can properly entertain a habeas petition is
one located in the “district in which the applicant is held,” in
other words, the district of confinement. 

 Discussing
these provisions, Padilla states that:

        Congress has also legislated against the
        background of the “district of confinement”
22                      DOE V. GARLAND


        rule by fashioning explicit exceptions to the
        rule in certain circumstances. For instance,
        § 2241(d) provides that when a petitioner is
        serving a state criminal sentence in a State
        that contains more than one federal district,
        he may file a habeas petition not only “in the
        district court for the district wherein he is in
        custody,” but also “in the district court for the
        district within which the State court was held
        which convicted and sentenced him”; and
        “each of such district courts shall have
        concurrent jurisdiction to entertain the
        application.” Similarly, until Congress
        directed federal criminal prisoners to file
        certain postconviction petitions in the
        sentencing courts by adding § 2255 to the
        habeas statute, federal prisoners could litigate
        such collateral attacks only in the district of
        confinement. Both of these provisions would
        have been unnecessary if . . . § 2241’s general
        habeas provisions permit a prisoner to file
        outside the district of confinement.

Padilla, 

 (cleaned up). All told, “[t]he plain
language of the habeas statute thus confirms the general rule
that for core habeas petitions challenging present physical
confinement, jurisdiction lies in only one district: the district
of confinement.” 

 And this court in Lopez-Marroquin v.
Barr affirmed the application of the district of confinement
rule to a § 2241 petition filed by an immigrant detainee,
ordering the transfer of his petition to the district where the
petitioner was confined. 955 F.3d at 759–60.
                       DOE V. GARLAND                     23


    In arguing that the Northern District of California could
exercise jurisdiction over his habeas petition, Doe primarily
relies on the Supreme Court’s decision in Rasul v. Bush. In
Rasul, the Supreme Court cited Braden v. 30th Judicial
Circuit Court of Kentucky, for the premise that in
interpreting the “within their respective jurisdictions”
language of 

(a):

       this Court held . . . that the prisoner’s
       presence within the territorial jurisdiction of
       the district court is not ‘an invariable
       prerequisite’ to the exercise of district court
       jurisdiction under the federal habeas statute.
       Rather, because ‘the 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,’ a
       district court acts ‘within [its] respective
       jurisdiction’ within the meaning of § 2241 as
       long as the custodian can be reached by
       service of process.

Rasul v. Bush, 

, 478–79 (2004) (citing Braden,

, 494–95 (1973)). It follows, according to Doe,
that the Field Office Director is Doe’s custodian, the Field
Office Director operates out of the Northern District of
California, and thus the district court properly exercised
jurisdiction since the Field Office Director can be reached
by service of process in the Northern District of California.
    Rasul does not alter the general rule that core habeas
petitions must be filed in the district of confinement. Rasul
addressed “whether the habeas statute confers a right to
judicial review of the legality of executive detention of
24                      DOE V. GARLAND


aliens in a territory over which the United States exercises
plenary and exclusive jurisdiction, but not ‘ultimate
sovereignty.’” Rasul, 

. In other words, Rasul
presented an issue wholly different from Padilla and the
instant case—examining the unique circumstances of
detainees at Guantanamo Naval Base, for which there is no
judicial district. See Gherebi v. Bush, 

 (9th
Cir. 2004) (discussing how Rasul applied an exception to the
immediate custodian and district of confinement rules in the
case of detainees at Guantanamo Bay). Accordingly, Rasul
does not help Doe.
    Doe’s remaining arguments emphasize the prudential
concerns associated with forcing GSA detainees to file
habeas petitions in the Eastern District of California. Doe
highlights the high caseloads and understaffing issues in that
district, which he suggests will inevitably lead to delays in
habeas petitioners obtaining judicial review or a possible
remedy. But here, 

 and the related statutory
provisions governing habeas petitions set the jurisdictional
rules. Of course, there are prudential concerns with Doe’s
position as well, such as the possibility of forum shopping
and the uncertainty created by multiple possible jurisdictions
where a § 2241 petition could be filed. But even crediting
Doe’s concerns for docket delay and congestion, it is the job
of Congress, not this court, to address those concerns
through appropriate legislation. See Vasquez v. Reno, 

 (1st Cir. 2000) (“If Congress apprehends that
an overcrowding of the dockets of certain district courts
threatens to interfere with the rights of habeas petitioners, it
has demonstrated an ability to rectify that condition through
legislation.”). Because “[f]ederal judges undertake to apply
the law as it is written,” Salisbury v. City of Santa Monica,

 (9th Cir. 2021), we therefore find that the
                            DOE V. GARLAND                               25


district court erred in exercising jurisdiction over Doe’s
petition due to his failure to file in the district of
confinement.
                        IV. CONCLUSION
    Today we affirm the application of the immediate
custodian and district of confinement rules to core habeas
petitions filed pursuant to 

, including those
filed by immigrant detainees. The district court erred in
exercising jurisdiction over Doe’s core habeas petition
because Doe failed to name his immediate custodian as
respondent to his petition and filed the petition outside the
district of his confinement. We thus REVERSE the district
court’s denial of Respondents’ motion to dismiss and grant
of Doe’s petition and REMAND this case to the district
court with instructions to VACATE the grant of Doe’s
petition for writ of habeas corpus.6




6
  Pending before the court are two motions: Doe’s motion for judicial
notice, Dkt. 19, and Doe’s motion to file a supplemental brief, which
included the proposed brief. Dkt. 46. We deny both of those motions
but note that consideration of the additional materials that are the subject
of these motions would not change the outcome of this case.