The opinion
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND
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MERRICK STEDMAN, *
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Plaintiff, *
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v. * Civil No. SAG-24-01779
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ROBERT S. DEAN, JR., et al., **
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Defendants. *
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MEMORANDUM OPINION
Plaintiff Merrick Stedman (“Plaintiff”) filed a Complaint against Defendants Robert S.
Dean, Jr., Warden of the Jessup Correctional Institution (“JCI”), Warden Gregory A. Werner,
Warden of the Maryland Correctional Institution – Hagerstown (“MCI–H”), and Michelle A.
Taylor, a Commitment Records Specialist Supervisor with the Maryland Division of Correction
(“DOC”) (collectively, “Defendants”) for claims arising out of Plaintiff’s transfer from state
custody to the custody of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”).
Currently pending is Defendants’ motion to dismiss the Complaint, ECF 8, which argues it
should be dismissed because of qualified immunity, statutory immunity, and failure to state a
claim against certain Defendants. Plaintiff filed an opposition, ECF 9, and Defendants filed a
reply, ECF 10. No hearing is necessary. See Loc. R. 105.6 (D. Md. 2023). For the reasons that
follow, the motion to dismiss will be granted in part and denied in part.
I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
The following facts are derived from the Complaint, ECF 1, and are assumed to be true
for purposes of this motion. Plaintiff is a Jamaican national who immigrated to the United States
in 1981 when he was six years old. Id. ¶ 9. At age 17, Plaintiff was convicted of murder and
received a life sentence. Id. ¶ 10. The following year, in 1993, ICE’s predecessor agency
(Immigration and Naturalization Services or “INS”) issued a Form I-247N “Notice of Action” to
the Maryland facility where Plaintiff was incarcerated. Id. ¶ 11. The form requested that the
Maryland facility “accept this notice as a detainer” and “notify INS at the time of release at least
30 days prior to release or as much in advance as possible.” Id. The Form I-247N did not indicate
that INS directed local officials to take Plaintiff into custody or suggest that he was subject to
deportation or removal. Id. ¶¶ 12–13.
Subsequently, in 1998, INS sent Plaintiff a notice to appear (Form I-862), which alleged
that he was subject to removal from the United States due to his criminal conviction. Id. ¶ 15. A
federal immigration judge ordered his removal on or about June 5, 1998, but further removal
proceedings were put on hold because Plaintiff continued serving his murder sentence. Id. ¶ 15.
The final removal order did not direct or authorize state prison officials to continue to detain
Plaintiff. Id. ¶ 16.
In 2021, Maryland enacted the Maryland Juvenile Restoration Act (“JUVRA”), which, in
relevant part, allows a court, after certain findings, to reduce a sentence for a person convicted of
a crime as a child who has served more than twenty (20) years of that sentence. Id. ¶ 17. Plaintiff
filed a motion to reconsider his sentence pursuant to JUVRA. Id. ¶ 18. After a motions hearing
on September 30, 2022, at which the state did not oppose a sentence reduction, a state court
judge granted the motion, suspended the remaining term of Plaintiff’s sentence, and placed him
on five years of unsupervised probation. Id. ¶ 19–20.
Nevertheless, on that same date, Defendant Michelle A. Taylor, the Commitment
Records Specialist Supervisor and Manager, electronically signed a document providing that
Plaintiff would be released “to a detainer lodged on 7/29/1993 by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement.” Id. ¶ 22. Due to Taylor’s notation, Plaintiff was held at JCI through October 3,
2022, before being transferred to MCI–H and held until October 5, 2022. Id. ¶¶ 24, 25. The
Complaint alleges, as to Warden Dean at JCI and Warden Werner at MCI–Hagerstown, that “in
his role as Warden,” each Warden “approved and facilitated Plaintiff’s continued detention.” Id.
¶¶ 24, 25. The Complaint further alleges that the Wardens “had actual or constructive knowledge
that Ms. Taylor and other prison officials had a practice of holding inmates beyond their release
date pursuant to ICE detainers which do not provide probable cause of criminal activity.” Id.
¶ 26. The Complaint also alleges that, “Ultimately, Defendants Taylor, Werner, and/or Dean,
and/or other prison officials under their explicit direction, contacted ICE officials to alert them
that Mr. Stedman’s sentence had been reduced to ‘time served’ and that he was being held
pursuant to the 1993 INS notice.” Id. ¶ 27. On October 5, 2022, the Complaint alleges that
“Defendants” transferred Plaintiff’s custody to ICE. Id. ¶ 30. Plaintiff was deported to Jamaica
on July 27, 2023. Id. ¶ 32.
Plaintiff’s Complaint asserts six counts: (1) violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth
Amendments to be free from unlawful search, seizure and detainment without a warrant or
probable cause; (2) violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to be free from
deprivation of liberty without due process; (3) violation of Article 24 of the Maryland
Declaration of Rights; (4) violation of Article 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights; (5) false
imprisonment, and (6) gross negligence.
II. MOTION TO DISMISS
Defendants’ motion raises three arguments in favor of dismissal. This Court will address
each in turn.
A. QUALIFIED IMMUNITY
Defendants seek to dismiss Plaintiff’s federal constitutional claims, invoking qualified
immunity. While that defense may be raised in a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, Jenkins v.
Medford, 119 F.3d 1156, 1159 (4th Cir. 1997), “when asserted at this early stage in the
proceedings, ‘the defense faces a formidable hurdle’ and ‘is usually not successful.’” Owens v.
Balt. City State’s Attorney’s Office, 767 F.3d 379, 396 (4th Cir. 2014) (quoting Field Day, LLC
v. Cnty. of Suffolk, 463 F.3d 167, 191–92 (2nd Cir. 2006)). “To establish a qualified-immunity
defense, a public official must demonstrate that (1) a plaintiff has not alleged or shown facts that
make out a violation of a constitutional right, or that (2) the right at issue was [not] clearly
established at the time of’ its alleged violation.” Owens, 767 F.3d at 395–96 (internal quotations
omitted). To determine whether an official’s conduct violated clearly established law, this Court
must consider whether “at the time of the challenged conduct, [t]he contours of [a] right [are]
sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would…underst[and] that what he is doing
violates that right.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011) (internal quotation marks
omitted). In other words, “existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional
question beyond debate.” Id.
Immigration “detainers” exist at the intersection of criminal law and civil proceedings.
Criminal arrests typically occur after a probable cause determination and issuance of a warrant
by a judicial officer. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 216 (1983). Warrantless arrests are only
constitutionally permissible in certain limited circumstances. Here, there are no allegations that a
criminal arrest warrant had issued for Plaintiff. And continued detention after the grounds for an
initial arrest have concluded, such as expiration of a sentence, is treated for constitutional
purposes as a new arrest. See Morales v. Chadbourne, 793 F.3d 2018, 217 (1st Cir. 2015)
(“Because Morales was kept in custody for a new purpose after she was entitled to release, she
was subject to a new seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes.”); see also Arizona v. United
States, 567 U.S. 387, 413 (2012) (“Detaining individuals solely to verify their immigration status
would raise constitutional concerns.”) United States v. Mason, 628 F.3d 123, 136 (4th Cir. 2010)
(Gregory, J., dissenting) (separate reasonable suspicion required to perform a stop and to extend
that stop).
While federal officials operate under different rules, for state and local officials,
“immigration stops and arrests [are] subject to the same Fourth Amendment requirements that
apply to other stops and arrests.” Morales, 793 F.3d at215–16 . Immigration proceedings, of
course, are civil, not criminal, in nature. Arizona, 567 U.S. at 396. Accordingly, “[b]ecause civil
immigration violations do not constitute crimes, suspicion or knowledge that an individual has
committed a civil immigration violation, by itself, does not give a law enforcement officer
probable cause to believe the individual is engaged in criminal activity.” Santos v. Frederick
Cnty. Bd. of Com’rs, 725 F.3d 451, 465 (4th Cir. 2013). In Santos, the Fourth Circuit noted that
in the absence of a criminal arrest warrant or any other basis to make a warrantless arrest, state
and local law enforcement officers may only detain or arrest an individual for known or
suspected civil immigration violations under “express direction or authorization by federal
statute or federal officials.” Id. In that case, the Fourth Circuit deemed the detention and arrest of
the plaintiff improper, because local law enforcement officers had discovered an immigration
warrant during a routine citizen encounter but had received no instruction from the federal
government to take the plaintiff into custody. Id.
Plaintiff also cites Artiga Carrero v. Farrelly, 270 F. Supp. 3d 851 (D. Md. 2017), a case
where a local law enforcement officer engaged in a traffic stop because he noticed that the
plaintiff was Latina, and a search of her identification in the NCIC database revealed a civil
order of removal from immigration authorities. The local officer then arrested Plaintiff, stating
he needed to investigate further. Plaintiff was transported to the detention center and eventually
transferred to ICE custody. The Court declined to find that the local officer enjoyed qualified
immunity because Plaintiff had adequately pled that, at the time the local officer took her into
custody, he had not had any direction or authorization from federal statutes or officials to detain
her. Id. at 873.
Defendants attempt to distinguish Santos and Artiga Carrero because in those cases,
local officers detained a plaintiff without having received any communication or direction from
ICE to do so. ECF 10 at 5. Defendants argue that, in this case, INS had issued the Form I-247N
detainer and that their decision to keep Plaintiff detained was therefore warranted. But their
argument ignores the fact, alleged by Plaintiff, that the Form I-247N detainer issued in 1993 did
not direct further detention of Plaintiff. While the form stated that it should be “lodged as a
detainer,” it simply requested the local authorities to provide immigration officials with advance
notice of Plaintiff’s release. This case therefore squarely falls within the purview of Santos and
Artiga Carrero, because Defendants had received no communication or direction from ICE or its
predecessor entity to detain Plaintiff after his release from state custody1.
1 Defendants argue that Rios v. Jenkins, 390 F. Supp.3d 714 (W.D. Va. 2019), is persuasive
precedent. In Rios, a local official received a Form I-247 detainer and an administrative warrant
issued by ICE in 2017. That 2017 version of Form I-247 expressly requested that the Jail
“[m]aintain custody of the alien for a period NOT TO EXCEED 48 HOURS beyond the time
when he/she would otherwise have been released from [the Jail's] custody to allow DHS to
assume custody.” Id. at 719. Rios is readily distinguishable because the detainer in the instant
case did not request that Plaintiff be maintained in custody for any period of time, it simply
asked to be provided notice prior to his release. Unsurprisingly, it appears Form I-247 underwent
significant revision in the 24 years between 1993 and 2017. Of course, this may explain why
local officials in this case believed that Form I-247 directed continued detention, because they
would be more familiar with the modern iterations of that form.
While Defendants will of course be free to re-raise their qualified immunity defense after
further facts have been elucidated through discovery, this Court cannot conclude at this stage that
qualified immunity applies, in light of the facts alleging that local officials detained a plaintiff on
a civil immigration notice absent direction from federal officials to do so.
B. STATUTORY IMMUNITY
Defendants argue that Plaintiff’s state law claims must be dismissed pursuant to the
statutory immunity granted by the Maryland Tort Claims Act (“MTCA”). That statute provides
that State personnel “are immune from suit in courts of the State and from liability in tort for a
tortious act or omission that is within the scope of the public duties of the State personnel and is
made without malice or gross negligence.” Cts. and Jud. Proc. § 5-522. The MTCA’s sovereign
immunity applies to both constitutional and intentional torts. Lee v. Cline, 384 Md. 245, 266
(2004). A plaintiff must “sufficiently allege[] malice or gross negligence” and may not rely on
“conclusory allegations” to defeat MTCA immunity. Barbe v. Pope, 402 Md. 157, 181–82, 188
(2007). Malice is “conduct characterized by evil or wrongful motive, intent to injure, knowing
and deliberate wrongdoing, ill-will or fraud.” Id. at 182 (internal quotations omitted). And a
government official acts with gross negligence “only when he or she inflicts injury intentionally
to is so utterly indifferent to the rights of others that he or she acts as if such rights did not exist.”
Cooper v. Rodriguez, 443 Md. 680, 708 (2015)
Plaintiff’s complaint contains no factual allegations suggesting that Defendants here
acted with the requisite malice or gross negligence. He offers no evidence that any of these
Defendants knew or interacted with him at any point in time and no allegations to suggest that
what happened in this case is any more than (at best) a misreading of a very old INS form to
request extended detention when, in fact, the older version of the form did not include that
request. Plaintiff himself alleges that the updated version of Form I-247 requests a 48-hour
immigration hold. ECF 1 ¶¶ 40, 41. In light of those alleged facts, and the absence of any factual
allegations suggesting malice or gross negligence, all of the state constitutional and common law
tort claims against the Defendants will be dismissed without prejudice.
C. FAILURE TO STATE A CLAIM AGAINST SUPERVISORY
DEFENDANTS
Finally, Defendants Dean and Werner contend that the federal constitutional claims
against them must be dismissed because the Complaint fails to allege their personal
responsibility for any constitutional violation that may have occurred. This Court agrees.
1. Legal Standards
A defendant is permitted to test the legal sufficiency of a complaint by way of a motion
to dismiss. See, e.g., In re Birmingham, 846 F.3d 88, 92 (4th Cir. 2017); Goines v. Valley Cmty.
Servs. Bd., 822 F.3d 159, 165–66 (4th Cir. 2016). A Rule 12(b)(6) motion constitutes an
assertion by a defendant that, even if the facts alleged by a plaintiff are true, the complaint fails
as a matter of law “to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.” FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6).
Whether a complaint states a claim for relief is assessed by reference to the pleading
requirements of Rule 8(a)(2), which provides that a complaint must contain a “short and plain
statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Id. 8(a)(2). The purpose of
the rule is to provide the defendant with “fair notice” of the claims and the “grounds” for
entitlement to relief. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555–56 (2007). In reviewing a
Rule 12(b)(6) motion, a court “must accept as true all of the factual allegations contained in the
complaint” and must “draw all reasonable inferences [from those facts] in favor of the plaintiff.”
E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Kolon Indus., Inc., 637 F.3d 435, 440 (4th Cir. 2011) (citations
omitted); Houck v. Substitute Tr. Servs., Inc., 791 F.3d 473, 484 (4th Cir. 2015). But if a
complaint provides no more than “labels and conclusions” or “a formulaic recitation of the
elements of a cause of action,” it is insufficient. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555.
Fourth Circuit law requires that a Plaintiff seeking to establish supervisory liability in a
§ 1983 action plausibly plead facts suggesting: “(1) that the supervisor had actual or constructive
knowledge that his subordinate was engaged in conduct that posed a pervasive and unreasonable
risk of constitutional injury to citizens like the plaintiff; (2) that the supervisor’s response to that
knowledge was so inadequate as to show deliberate indifference to or tacit authorization of the
alleged offensive practices; and (3) that there was an affirmative causal link between the
supervisor’s inaction and the particular constitutional injury suffered by the plaintiff.” Shaw v.
Stroud, 13 F.3d 791, 799 (4th Cir. 1994).
2. Analysis
Plaintiff’s claims against Warden Dean and Warden Werner are simply the sort of “labels
and conclusions,” unsupported by facts, that Twombly prohibits. There are no particularized facts
pertaining to actions taken or facts known by either Warden, just generic, indefinite phrases like
“approved and facilitated,” or “had actual or constructive knowledge.” In fact, Plaintiff’s
assertion that “Defendants Taylor, Werner, and/or Dean, and/or other prison officials under their
explicit direction, contacted ICE officials to alert them that Mr. Stedman’s sentence had been
reduced to ‘time served’ and that he was being held pursuant to the 1993 INS notice.” Id. ¶ 27,
illustrates Plaintiff’s evident lack of knowledge of which individuals took which actions and how
the situation unfolded.2 While group pleading can be permissible in certain circumstances, it
must be “plausible that each defendant was involved in all of the facts as alleged.” See Sprint
2 As currently pled, some of Plaintiff’s assertions are not particularly plausible, as it is unlikely
that JCI officials would be making contact with ICE officials about Plaintiff’s immigration status
after his departure from their facility.
Nextel Corp. v. Simple Cell, Inc., Civil No. CCB-13-617, 2013 WL 3776933, at *2 (D. Md. July
17, 2013). Plaintiff’s Complaint does not suggest that all of those individuals took the actions in
question, it simply uses improper group pleading to suggest that someone did.
Of course, this Court recognizes that, under the circumstances, Plaintiff likely lacks
sufficient information about the decision-making process within the two institutions to identify
by name the persons who may bear personal responsibility for his continued detention. The
remedy for that information gap is not to assert implausible claims against supervisory
defendants without factual support, but to make use of discovery and related federal procedures
to identify the appropriate persons to name as defendants.
III. CONCLUSION
For the reasons set forth above, Defendants’ motion is denied as to the federal
constitutional claims against Defendant Taylor in Counts I and II and granted without prejudice
as to the state law claims in Counts III-VI and all claims against Defendants Werner and Dean.
Plaintiff shall be afforded thirty days to seek leave to file an amended complaint.
Dated: April 2, 2025 /s/
Stephanie A. Gallagher
United States District Judge