## Facts

- After the 1980 Mariel boatlift, many Cuban nationals were detained by the United States, including individuals held at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.
- The plaintiffs were a certified class of Mariel Cuban refugees treated as “unadmitted” aliens for immigration purposes and given a special parole-related status under federal law addressing Cuban and Haitian entrants.
- The district court divided the class into two subclasses: (1) detainees never paroled into the United States (including those associated with criminal conduct in Cuba or mental incompetency), and (2) detainees initially paroled under the general parole statute but whose parole was later revoked.
- The plaintiffs challenged the government’s denial or revocation of immigration parole and sought individualized parole revocation hearings and related procedural protections.
- They alleged that continued detention without individualized, judicially reviewable parole revocation hearings violated the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause and customary international law.
- The district court ordered the government to prepare and implement a plan providing individual parole revocation hearings for unadmitted aliens.
- The government appealed the hearing requirement; the plaintiffs cross-appealed on related aspects of the judgment.

## Issues

1. Whether unadmitted aliens detained in the United States had a protected liberty interest—created by statute, regulation, or executive policy—that triggered Fifth Amendment due process requirements for individualized parole revocation hearings.
2. Whether customary international law supplied a judicially enforceable basis in U.S. courts to require individualized review or release from continued detention.

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court to the extent it required individualized parole revocation hearings for the class based on the Fifth Amendment.
- The court held the plaintiffs failed to establish any protected liberty interest in continued parole or in parole revocation procedures because immigration parole is committed to broad executive discretion.
- The court affirmed the district court’s rejection of the plaintiffs’ customary international law claims, concluding such law did not provide a remedy enforceable in American courts on these facts.
- The judgment left the government free to continue detaining these unadmitted Mariel Cuban detainees without the court-ordered individualized parole revocation hearings.

## Legal Principles

- Unadmitted aliens, though physically present, do not automatically receive the same procedural due process protections as admitted aliens; any due process claim generally requires a cognizable liberty interest.
- Discretionary immigration parole under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5) is a matter of executive discretion and ordinarily does not create an enforceable liberty interest in parole continuation or in particular revocation procedures absent binding limits on discretion.
- Even assuming non-core, government-created liberty interests may exist in some settings, broad discretionary parole frameworks without mandatory substantive predicates do not create such an interest.
- Customary international law, in this context, did not supply an independent, judicially enforceable right to parole hearings or release that could override domestic immigration detention authority.

## Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit held that unadmitted Mariel Cuban detainees had no protected liberty interest requiring individualized parole revocation hearings and that customary international law afforded no judicial remedy, reversing the district court’s hearing mandate while affirming the rejection of the international-law claims.


Garcia-Mir v. Meese, 788 F.2d 1446 (11th Cir. 1986)