Fulton v. Noem: Ensuring Medical Treatment for the Critically Sick upon Release from Detention

Case Citation

Fulton v. Noem (2d Cir. filed Jan. 25, 2025)

Fulton v. Mayorkas, 2025 WL 296051 (W.D.N.Y. Jan. 24, 2025)

Tags

This case challenges the government’s refusal to provide discharge planning to a man scheduled for release from immigration detention who is almost certain to die unless provided dialysis.

Mr. Fulton is a 39-year-old man who suffers from End Stage Renal Disease and is currently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York. He requires dialysis treatment three times a week in order to survive. Though he is scheduled for release from detention through removal from the United States to Jamaica, the government refuses to provide him with discharge planning, including scheduling of dialysis upon release, for the period of time reasonably necessary for him to secure his own medical care after his release.

Why is this a key case?

The U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment obliges the federal government to provide transitional medical care for people with ongoing medical needs whom it releases from civil detention. This is because when the government deprives a person of liberty through civil detention, it also deprives them of the opportunity to provide for their own medical care. Mere release of a person with ongoing medical needs, without any transitional care, does not provide a reasonable opportunity to arrange one’s own care.

Immigration detention is also governed by a set of rules adopted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement called the Performance Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS). Those standards obligate the government to provide transitional medical care upon release from detention or deportation. For people with serious medical issues, adherence to the PBNDS are a matter of life and death.

But for any of these laws to be meaningful, a court must have jurisdiction to enforce them. In this case, the government argues that Congress stripped federal courts of jurisdiction for any claims arising from execution of a removal order. Under this reasoning, the government claims that no court has the power to stop it from executing a removal order, even if that means certain death for the person removed.

What is the status of this case?

Mr. Fulton has been granted a temporary stay of removal after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that he is likely to succeed on the merits of his argument that federal courts have jurisdiction over challenges to the manner of removal, as opposed to the discretionary decision to remove.