Case: 21-60634 Document: 00516735298 Page: 1 Date Filed: 05/02/2023 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit ____________ FILED May 2, 2023 No. 21-60634 Lyle W. Cayce ____________ Clerk Louis Gonzalez, also known as Carlos Ramos Sanchez, Plaintiff—Appellant, versus Shawn R. Gillis; Stanley Crockett; Chad Wolf; William Barr, Defendants—Appellees. ______________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi USDC No. 5:20-CV-104 ______________________________ Before Clement, Graves, and Higginson, Circuit Judges. Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge: * Louis Gonzalez, an immigration detainee, alleges that the warden of a privately operated detention center and three former federal officials violated his rights by restricting his use of the LexisNexis database. After the district court sua sponte dismissed Gonzalez’s claims, he appealed. We agree with the district court that Gonzalez’s claims for injunctive relief are moot and his _____________________ * This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5. Case: 21-60634 Document: 00516735298 Page: 2 Date Filed: 05/02/2023 No. 21-60634 other claims are inadequately pleaded. However, we conclude that the district court erred in dismissing Gonzalez’s claims with prejudice when he had not yet been given an opportunity to amend his complaint to allege his best case. Therefore, we REVERSE and REMAND for the district court to enter a new order of dismissal. I. A. When Gonzalez filed his complaint on April 16, 2020, he was detained at a private facility in Washington, Mississippi (the Washington facility), which contracts with the federal government to house immigration detainees. 2 The complaint asserts that Gonzalez and other detainees “are challenging their prolonged immigration detention . . . through habeas corpus petitions.” On March 20, 2020, the Washington facility allegedly changed “the LexisNexis law program . . . installed [on] the law library computers” by removing “federal and immigration cases.” Gonzalez alleges that those cases are “vital for the detainees[’] defense” and that the removal of those cases is therefore “hindering” him and other detainees from “prepar[ing] their cases . . . to challenge effectively the prolonged detention they are suffering.” In addition, the Washington facility allegedly disabled the “right click” button on mice in the library, which kept detainees from copying and pasting and forced them “to type long paragraphs of law into their allegations.” Gonzalez’s complaint includes four causes of action against the warden of the Washington facility, the Director of the New Orleans Field _____________________ 2 Gonzalez’s complaint refers to this facility as the “Adams County Detention Center.” The federal defendants’ brief calls it the “Adams County Correctional Center,” and the warden’s letter brief calls it the “Adams County Correctional Facility.” 2 Case: 21-60634 Document: 00516735298 Page: 3 Date Filed: 05/02/2023 No. 21-60634 Office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General of the United States. He brings a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that the defendants violated his federal constitutional “right of access to the courts,” …
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