Rodriguez Vazquez v. Sessions

The Fifth Circuit granted a petition for panel rehearing and withdrew its prior opinion, substituting the following opinion.Petitioner appealed the BIA's decision that he was eligible for deportation pursuant to 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(2)(B)(i) for possessing a controlled substance in violation of Oklahoma law. This circuit has held that the realistic probability test applies whenever the categorical approach is employed. See United States v. Castillo-Rivera, 853 F.3d 218 (5th Cir. 2017) (en banc), cert. denied, No. 17-5054, 2017 WL 2855255 (Dec. 4, 2017). The court held that, given that the state statute is facially broader than its federal analog, Castillo-Rivera suggests that petitioner could prevail only if the realistic probability test was satisfied. However, petitioner failed to address the question in his brief on appeal, and thus waived the only argument available to him in the wake of Castillo-Rivera. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review. View "Rodriguez Vazquez v. Sessions" on Justia Law