FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
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JOAQUIM PEDRO DE MORAIS FILHO, (Passport No. GD584268; SSN 123-45-6789), Petitioner / Plaintiff, v.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY (DHS); U.S. IMMIGRATION AND
CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE);
WELLS FARGO & COMPANY; and
JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A.,Respondents / Defendants. ---------------------------------------------------x
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Case No.: [TO BE ASSIGNED] ACTION FILED PURSUANT TO: 28 U.S.C. § 2241 5 U.S.C. § 702 ET SEQ. U.S. CONST. AMEND. V |
COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF PURSUANT TO THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURE ACT (5 U.S.C. § 702 ET SEQ.),
AND DEMAND FOR IMMEDIATE STAY AND PROTECTIVE ORDER AGAINST UNCONSTITUTIONAL DEPRIVATION OF PROPERTY (U.S. CONST. AMEND. V)
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT AND CONSTITUTIONAL IMPERATIVE
This action challenges an unprecedented, systemic, and unconstitutional machinery of wealth extraction operating in the shadow of federal immigration enforcement. By design and execution, the United States government—acting through DHS and ICE—forcibly removes non-citizens from the physical and digital jurisdiction of the United States. Concurrently, highly regulated financial institutions, operating under the color of federal anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance frameworks, exploit this government-mandated physical absence. They weaponize geographic impossibilities (e.g., foreign IP blocks, U.S.-only SMS authentication, and mandatory in-branch visitation policies) to systematically lock deported individuals out of their lawfully earned, federally insured deposits.
This orchestrated sequence amounts to a de facto, unadjudicated civil asset forfeiture. It offends the core axiom of American jurisprudence—Nemo tenetur ad impossibile (no one is bound to perform the impossible). The State cannot physically banish a person from its territory and subsequently allow its financial proxies to confiscate their personal property for failing to physically appear to claim it. This Kafkaesque paradigm violates the Due Process and Takings Clauses of the Fifth Amendment, transforming routine banking compliance into an instrument of unconstitutional, state-sponsored grand larceny. Petitioner invokes the Great Writ, 28 U.S.C. § 2241, adapting its historic function to liberate not just the physical body, but the constructive economic identity unlawfully held in the Respondents' custody.
SYLLABUS
This emergency petition challenges the systematic, bureaucratic, and unconstitutional deprivation of personal property—amounting to constructive grand larceny and unconstitutional seizure—perpetrated jointly by federal immigration authorities (ICE/DHS) and primary financial institutions, specifically Wells Fargo & Company and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. As detailed herein, the accelerated deportation pipeline operates in tandem with rigid banking compliance mechanisms (e.g., foreign IP blocks, SMS two-factor authentication failures, and physical branch visitation requirements) to deliberately permanently sever deported non-citizens from their lawfully earned financial assets. This architecture of financial exclusion ensures that the assets of deported individuals are functionally confiscated and ultimately surrendered to state treasuries via escheatment laws. Petitioner seeks an immediate injunction compelling the Respondent banks to freeze and hold in trust the funds of deported individuals to facilitate their lawful repatriation abroad, and a preliminary injunction suspending the imminent 2026 executive mandates that require citizenship verification to maintain or open depository accounts, which violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
I. JURISDICTION AND VENUE
This Court possesses subject matter jurisdiction over this action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (Federal Question), as this controversy arises directly under the Constitution and laws of the United States. Specifically, Petitioner brings claims alleging severe violations of the Due Process and Takings Clauses of the Fifth Amendment, as well as arbitrary and capricious agency actions under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 702 et seq. The dispute hinges on the unconstitutional weaponization of federal banking regulations—including the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and the USA PATRIOT Act—to effectuate the extrajudicial seizure of immigrant assets by private institutions acting under the color of federal mandates.
This Court further possesses jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 (Habeas Corpus). While traditionally applied to the physical custody of persons, the Great Writ must adapt to modern state mechanisms of control. Because the Respondent federal agencies (DHS/ICE) have physically banished the Petitioner, and the Respondent banks are acting as deputized extensions of the state's enforcement and regulatory apparatus to indefinitely hold the Petitioner's digital and economic identity hostage, this Court has jurisdiction to command the "custodians" of these unlawfully seized assets to release them.
Jurisdiction to grant preliminary and emergency injunctive relief is firmly established under 28 U.S.C. § 1651 (The All Writs Act) and Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Court has the inherent authority to issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of its jurisdiction. Here, intervention is urgently required to freeze the disputed funds and prevent their imminent, irreversible transfer to state treasuries via escheatment laws, thereby preserving the res of this litigation.
Venue is unequivocally proper in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b)(2) and (e)(1). The SDNY is the preeminent financial nerve center of the United States and the global economy. Respondent JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., is headquartered within this District (383 Madison Avenue, New York, NY), and Respondent Wells Fargo & Company maintains critical corporate, compliance, and international wire-routing operations here. The algorithmic policies, KYC/AML compliance directives, and digital lockouts that orchestrate these constitutional violations are formulated, directed, and executed from within this District. Consequently, a substantial part of the events, policies, and omissions forming the basis of this claim occurred squarely within the territorial purview of this Court.
II. PARTIES AND ARTICLE III STANDING
Petitioner Joaquim Pedro de Morais Filho is a Brazilian national, holding Passport No. GD584268, currently residing in São Paulo, Brazil. Despite lacking U.S. citizenship and current physical presence within the territorial United States, Petitioner possesses a valid U.S. Social Security Number (123-45-6789) and maintains a legally protected, vested property interest in depository accounts domiciled within the United States. Petitioner has established profound, legally binding financial, tax, and labor nexuses within the U.S., including historical compliance with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) taxation. The Fifth Amendment explicitly protects "persons"—not merely citizens—and the Supreme Court has long established that foreign nationals hold fundamental constitutional protections regarding property situated within U.S. borders. See Russian Volunteer Fleet v. United States, 282 U.S. 481 (1931). The res in question—the capital—remains strictly within U.S. territorial jurisdiction, firmly establishing Petitioner's right to constitutional redress.
Petitioner explicitly satisfies the tripartite strictures of Article III standing as established by the Supreme Court in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992). First, Petitioner demonstrates a concrete, particularized, and imminent "injury in fact": the unconstitutional, unadjudicated seizure and constructive conversion of his personal liquid assets under the guise of regulatory compliance. Second, there is a direct causal connection traceable to the intertwined and joint actions of the Respondents—the federal agencies effectuate the physical banishment, while the Respondent financial institutions immediately weaponize that physical absence to enact insurmountable digital and administrative lockouts. Third, the injury is inherently redressable by a favorable decision from this Court.
Respondents are the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal executive agencies responsible for the physical removal of the Petitioner; and Wells Fargo & Company and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., the primary financial institutions acting as custodians of the Petitioner's assets. By rigidly enforcing federal Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) directives to indefinitely freeze the assets of deported persons, the Respondent banks are operating under the color of federal law. Pursuant to the joint action and state compulsion doctrines—as articulated in Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922 (1982)—private parties executing state-sponsored deprivations of property are rendered "state actors" for the purpose of constitutional litigation, thereby making the Respondent banks proper and necessary parties to this grievance.
III. THE RELATOR’S FATAL LEGAL ERRORS: A CONTRADICTION OF DUE PROCESS
This Petition serves as an indispensable curative instrument to remedy the gross constitutional omissions and logical fallacies propagated in the prior administrative determinations (the "Relator's Decision") that summarily dismissed the financial rights of extraterritorial deportees. By ignoring the insurmountable logistical barriers deliberately imposed upon the Petitioner, the Relator’s ruling is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law," violating the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A)-(B).
The Relator committed a fatal and reversible error of law by concluding, whether implicitly or explicitly, that extraterritorial non-citizens forfeit their Fifth Amendment property protections upon physical removal. This rationale egregiously contradicts over a century of settled Supreme Court jurisprudence. As unequivocally established in Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (1896), and reaffirmed in Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), aliens—even those lacking lawful immigration status—are firmly guaranteed the protections of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Furthermore, the Relator’s omission of merit constitutes a textbook violation of procedural due process. Under the Supreme Court’s definitive framework established in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), the current bureaucratic architecture entirely fails constitutional scrutiny. Applying the Mathews tripartite balancing test: (1) the private interest at stake is absolute—the entirety of the Petitioner's life savings; (2) the risk of erroneous deprivation under the current system is virtually 100%; and (3) the administrative burden on the government and Respondent banks to provide a reasonable, alternative extraterritorial verification mechanism is minimal compared to the catastrophic financial ruin inflicted.
By endorsing the requirement that a deportee must physically access a U.S. bank branch or receive U.S. SMS authentication to reclaim their funds, the Relator effectively rubber-stamped an "unconstitutional condition." It is a Kafkaesque legal trap of the highest order: the State physically and legally bars the Petitioner from entering the jurisdiction, and simultaneously, its financial proxies utilize that very state-enforced absence as the legal justification to confiscate the Petitioner's wealth. Endorsing this paradox is not judicial restraint; it is complicity in constructive grand larceny.
IV. FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS: THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSTRUCTIVE THEFT
The Lawful Establishment of the Depository Relationship: Acting under the Customer Identification Program (CIP) mandated by Section 326 of the USA PATRIOT Act, U.S. financial institutions actively solicited this demographic, lawfully opening approximately 8.97 million bank accounts utilizing Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) and foreign consular identification.
Institutional Market Capture: Respondents Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase deliberately captured a massive market share of this capital. The funds deposited within these institutions are lawfully earned wages, fully subjected to federal and state taxation, and constitute the constitutionally protected private property of the account holders.
The ICE-Induced Logistical Paralysis: The mechanism of deprivation initiates when ICE executes "at-large," "no-release" detentions. By immediately placing individuals into mandatory detention without bond, the State physically incapacitates the account holder, preventing preemptive financial planning.
Algorithmic Lockouts and AML Weaponization: Upon physical removal to foreign territory, the deportee attempts to access their funds digitally. However, the Respondent banks' automated Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and anti-fraud algorithms immediately flag foreign IP address logins as "suspicious activity." To remediate the freeze, the banks' digital infrastructure inflexibly mandates an in-person visit to a physical U.S. branch or an SMS to a U.S. cellular network, to which the deportee no longer has access.
Escheatment as State-Sponsored Grand Larceny: Because the State creates the physical impossibility of access, and the banks ruthlessly enforce it, these assets languish in forced dormancy until they are seized by state treasuries via statutory escheatment laws. This is a predictable, unlegislated asset forfeiture pipeline operating entirely outside the bounds of judicial due process.
The Imminent 2026 Regulatory Purge: Exacerbating this architecture of theft, the anticipated 2026 executive mandates requiring banks to retroactively verify citizenship for account maintenance threaten to instigate a mass, wholesale liquidation of immigrant wealth, providing explicit legal cover for Respondent banks to preemptively purge undocumented customers.
V. CONSTITUTIONAL ARGUMENTATION
A. The Banality of Financial Erasure and the Proxy Takings Clause
17. The orchestrated silence with which the State and private banks strip deportees of their life savings is not mere administrative friction; it is a substantive violation of the Fifth Amendment. The State cannot accomplish indirectly what the Constitution forbids it to do directly. By mandating physical absence and concurrently empowering private proxies to freeze and escheat funds based on that exact absence, the State engineers an uncompensated "proxy taking."
B. The Expansion of Habeas Corpus: From Iron Bars to Constructive Custody
18. The Great Writ of Habeas Corpus (28 U.S.C. § 2241) must evolve beyond antiquated physical dimensions. In Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236 (1963), the Supreme Court definitively recognized that Habeas Corpus is not limited to physical dungeons.
19. Crucially, in Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), the Court recognized that an individual's digital presence is an inextricable extension of their person and property. Therefore, while ICE has physically deported the Petitioner's body, the Respondents maintain unlawful, constructive custody over the Petitioner's digital and economic existence. The physical body is abroad, but the economic lifeblood is imprisoned in New York. The writ must issue to liberate the res held hostage.
C. Stare Decisis and the Binding Nature of Customary International Law
20. The arbitrary, state-facilitated seizure of property belonging to displaced persons flagrantly violates customary international law, specifically Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property"). In citing international norms to define constitutional bounds, this Court must recognize a global legal consensus: utilizing deportation as a pretext for the systematic, uncompensated stripping of a vulnerable population's wealth is a fundamental violation of human rights that the U.S. Constitution strictly prohibits.
VI. PRAYER FOR RELIEF AND DEMAND FOR IMMEDIATE REMEDIES
WHEREFORE, Petitioner, having demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, the certainty of immediate and irreparable harm, and that the public interest overwhelmingly favors the preservation of constitutional rights, respectfully prays that this Honorable Court exercise its full equitable and statutory powers to:
A. WRITS OF HABEAS CORPUS AND MANDAMUS: Issue a Writ of Habeas Corpus (28 U.S.C. § 2241) and/or a Writ of Mandamus (28 U.S.C. § 1361), directing Respondents Wells Fargo & Company and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. to immediately dismantle their unconstitutional logistical barriers and establish a secure, accessible, extraterritorial mechanism allowing deported individuals to authenticate their identity and repatriate their funds without the impossible condition of physical U.S. presence;
B. PRELIMINARY AND PERMANENT INJUNCTIVE RELIEF (ASSET PRESERVATION): Enter an immediate Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and subsequent Preliminary Injunction pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 65, enjoining Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase from transferring, liquidating, or surrendering any dormant funds belonging to deported individuals to state treasuries via statutory escheatment;
C. INJUNCTIVE RELIEF (REGULATORY SUSPENSION): Enter a Preliminary Injunction pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. § 705) suspending the implementation and enforcement of any 2026 executive or banking mandate that conditions the opening or maintenance of depository accounts on citizenship verification;
D. DECLARATORY JUDGMENT: Enter a Declaratory Judgment pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2201 declaring that the Relator's prior administrative omissions, the physical banishment by ICE/DHS, and the algorithmic lockouts enforced by the Respondent banks constitute a joint, systemic violation of the Due Process and Takings Clauses of the Fifth Amendment;
E. EXPEDITED DISCOVERY AND ACCOUNTING: Order an immediate and expedited accounting by the Respondent banks to identify the total volume of accounts frozen or escheated belonging to individuals whose physical addresses correspond to known ICE detention or removal records; and
F. Grant such other, further, and alternative relief as this Honorable Court deems just, equitable, and proper to cure these egregious constitutional violations.
São Paulo, Brazil
Joaquim Pedro de Morais Filho
Petitioner Pro Se
