article: <i>Turkmen v. Ashcroft</i>, also known as <i>Ziglar v. Abbasi</i>, is one of two related actions filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York by plaintiffs who were investigated and detained for suspected terrorist ties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It was filed on April 17, 2002 as a class-action lawsuit, but the class was never certified. The case was assigned to Judge John Gleeson. (The related case, <i>Elmaghraby v. Ashcroft</i> (later <i>Ashcroft v. Iqbal</i>), was also assigned to Judge Gleeson, and was settled following the Supreme Court's ruling in that case, 556 U.S. 662.) This case was reassigned to Judge Dora Irizarry on March 9, 2016, when Judge Gleeson resigned from the bench to return to private practice. The plaintiffs in this case were men of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent who were arrested by the FBI and the INS in immigration raids following the September 11 attacks. They were held for months in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as the FBI investigated potential links to terrorism, but they were never charged with a crime. Some of the plaintiffs alleged that they were kept in solitary confinement, barred from communication with attorneys, family, and friends, subjected to physical and verbal abuse, and obstructed in their efforts to practice their religion. They sued the U.S. Attorney General, the FBI Director, the INS Commissioner, and employees of the Metropolitan Detention Center, alleging violations of the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, international human rights law, the Civil Rights Act, and the Alien Tort Statute, seeking compensatory and punitive damages. Factually, the plaintiffs alleged that notices to appear in court were delayed in reaching them, that they were subject to a blanket no-bond policy, and that they were arbitrarily classified as "of high interest." They claimed that they were subjected to strip searches, sleep deprivation, effective denial of exercise, denial of hygiene items and adequate food, inadequate medical attention, deliberate interference with religious rights, communications blackouts, interference with access to counsel, and denial of consular rights. The plaintiffs further alleged that they were subjected to these harsh conditions because of their religion or ethnicity, and that their continued detention under these conditions stemmed from a discriminatory policy created by high-level officials in the Bush Administration. The plaintiffs later amended their complaint in light of reports published by the Office of the Inspector General in April and December 2003. The amended complaints added new allegations, claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, one additional plaintiff, and 28 Metropolitan Detention Center employees as defendants. Four plaintiffs who had been deported were paroled into the U.S. for deposition. This was the first time that non-citizens barred from re-entering the U.S. were allowed to enter for the purpose of pursuing a civil case. While in the country they were under the strict custody of the U.S. Marshals Service. In 2007, the Department of Justice indicted eleven current and former Metropolitan Detention Center employees, including three <i>Turkmen</i> defendants. Ten of the eleven were convicted of physical attacks against detainees at the Center; those convictions did not involve attacks against the plaintiffs in this case. Following the 2009 Supreme Court ruling in <a href="https://www.clearinghouse.net/detail.php?id=9788"><i>Ashcroft v. Iqbal</i></a>, six of the plaintiffs settled their claims for $1.26 million. The remaining plaintiffs filed a fourth amended complaint on September 13, 2010, adding six new plaintiffs and attempting to meet the pleading standard set in <i>Iqbal</i>, so as to maintain claims against Ashcroft and other high-ranking officials. On January 15, 2013, the district court dismissed all claims against the Attorney General, the FBI Director, and the INS Commissioner (the "DOJ defendants"), and also dismissed two of the claims against the Metropolitan Detention Center employees (the "MDC defendants"). Those two claims, based on alleged communications blackouts and interference with counsel, were dismissed on the grounds of qualified immunity. The plaintiffs collectively and the MDC defendants individually appealed the ruling to the Second Circuit. The appeals were consolidated as Case No. 13-1662; the consolidated appeal was heard on May 1, 2014. More than a year later, on June 17, 2015, the appeals court reinstated the plaintiffs' claims under the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, the Fourth Amendment, and 42 U.S.C. §1985, against the DOJ defendants and the MDC defendants. The court upheld the dismissal, however, of the plaintiffs' claims under the Free Exercise Clause. In reinstating the claims against the Attorney General and the FBI Director for their post-September 11 policy decisions, the court was extending the application of <i>Bivens</i> into "a context not previously recognized by the Supreme Court or Second Circuit precedent." 789 F.3d 218 (2d Cir. 2015). It was also an innovation for the court to hold that officials were not protected by qualified immunity for punitive and discriminatory confinement and unreasonable strip searches that they imposed on detainees after learning that those detainees were being held with no individualized suspicion of terrorist connections. The defendants' petition for rehearing en banc was denied; they subsequently sought a 90-day stay of the mandate while the Solicitor General determined whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. The appeals court granted the stay, and the Supreme Court ultimately heard the appeal and issued a decision on June 19, 2017. Titling the case <i>Ziglar v. Abbasi</i>, the Supreme Court held that the Second Circuit should not have extended <i>Bivens</i> liability to the DOJ defendants, emphasizing that "Congress, not the courts, should decide whether a damages action should be allowed." 137 S.Ct. 1843. It held that the plaintiffs' abuse allegations against the MDC defendants did state a plausible claim for relief under the Fifth Amendment, and remanded to the Second Circuit to determine whether a <i>Bivens</i> damages remedy would be appropriate. Finally, the Court dismissed the 42 U.S.C. §1985 conspiracy claims, ruling that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. The Second Circuit remanded the case to the district court for additional proceedings. On February 27, 2018, the district court dismissed the plaintiffs' claims against the DOJ defendants and referred the remainder of their claims to a magistrate judge. In light of the Supreme Court's ruling, the remaining (MDC) defendants moved to dismiss the case for failure to state a claim. On August 13, 2018, the magistrate judge issued a report, recommending that the plaintiffs' claims against the MDC defendants be dismissed. The magistrate judge concluded that Congress was in "the best position to weight the costs and benefits of allowing a [<i>Bivens</i>] cause of action to proceed" in the context of prisoner abuse claims such as those brought in this case. The plaintiffs have since filed objections to the report. As of July 2, 2020, the report and the plaintiffs' objections to it are pending before the district court.
summary: Turkmen v. Ashcroft is one of two related actions, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, by plaintiffs who were investigated and detained for suspected terrorist ties in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The U.S. Attorney General, the FBI Director, and the INS Commissioner were named as defendants, but after a Supreme Court ruling in 2017, they were dismissed as defendants. The plaintiffs' remaining claims, against staff of the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York City, are before the district court on remand. A magistrate judge has recommended that the claims be dismissed.