Justia Immigration Law Opinion Summaries

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal for lack of jurisdiction of plaintiff's action challenging DHS's denial of I-130 visa petitions. Plaintiff filed petitions seeking Legal Permanent Residence (LPR) status for his non-citizen wife and her three non-citizen children. DHS denied the petitions pursuant to the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 because defendant had been convicted of committing a lewd and lascivious act with a child under the age of fourteen. Because the Adam Walsh Act clearly delineates who may have a petition granted—rather than who may literally file a petition—the panel held that the amended statute applied to petitions that were filed before, but were still pending on, its effective date. Therefore, USCIS correctly applied the Adam Walsh Act in plaintiff's case. The panel also held that applying the Adam Walsh Act to pending petitions did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause; the panel lacked jurisdiction to review plaintiff's statutory claims concerning the "no risk" determination; and plaintiff's constitutional claims were not colorable. View "Gebhardt v. Nielsen" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for reentering the country illegal following deportation. The court held that defendant was unable to meet the requirements that would allow for a collateral attack of her underlying deportation order. Even assuming without deciding that defendant was correct in asserting that a conviction for Florida grand theft no longer qualified as a crime involving moral turpitude, the court held that defendant was not deprived of a meaningful opportunity for judicial review of her deportation order and may not collaterally attack her underlying deportation order in these 8 U.S.C. 1326 proceedings. The court also held that the district court's evidentiary rulings were either not erroneous or, if they were, the error was harmless. View "United States v. Watkins" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendants' misdemeanor convictions under 8 U.S.C. 1325(a)(1) for attempting to enter the United States "at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers." The panel held that a place "designated by immigration officers" refers to a specific immigration facility, not an entire geographic area. In this case, there was no dispute that defendants did not enter the United States through a facility where immigration officials could accept applications for entry. Therefore, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, a rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants attempted to enter the United States in a place other than as designated by immigration officers. View "United States v. Aldana" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit denied petitions for review of the IJ's denial of petitioner's application for cancellation of removal and the BIA's dismissal of the subsequent appeal and denial of his motion to reconsider. The court held that the BIA did not err in finding that petitioner was ineligible for cancellation of removal, nor abused its discretion in denying his motion for reconsideration, because defendant's prior conviction for misdemeanor domestic assault under the Minnesota statute was a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. 16(a). In this case, the BIA appropriately applied this circuit's law and did not abuse its discretion. View "Ramirez-Barajas v. Sessions" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit vacated defendant's sentence of 60 months in prison, nearly three times the top of the Guidelines range, after he pleaded guilty to one count of illegally reentering the United States after having been removed following a conviction for an aggravated felony. In the context of the Sentencing Commission's statistics for illegal reentry cases and all the circumstances here, the court was not persuaded that the justification offered by the district court was sufficient to support the magnitude of the variance. The court also held that there may have been factual errors in the district court's discussion of the record and the district court's reluctance to credit defendant's acceptance of responsibility (although it did so in the end) suggested that the district court may have conflated defendant's statements in mitigation with a failure to accept responsibility. Accordingly, the court remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Singh" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's conviction of attempted reentry of a removed alien. Defendant argued that his 2009 removal was invalid because his 1997 drug trafficking conviction under Wash. Rev. Code 69.50.401 was incorrectly determined to be an aggravated felony. The panel held that defendant's waiver of the right to seek judicial review was not considered and intelligent, and thus he was deprived of due process. Furthermore, defendant's prior drug trafficiking conviction did not qualify as an aggravated felony under the categorical approach and could not be the basis for defendant's 2009 removal. Therefore, defendant satisfied all three elements of 8 U.S.C. 1326(d), and his collateral attack on the underlying deportation order should have been successful. The panel remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Valdivia-Flores" on Justia Law

The Tenth Circuit expedited consideration of this bail appeal to consider Mario Ailon-Ailon’s argument that the government has misinterpreted the word “flee” as it appeared in 18 U.S.C. 3142(f)(2), resulting in his illegal pre-trial detention. He argued that involuntary removal by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) did not constitute flight of the sort that would justify detention. On initial consideration, a magistrate judge agreed and determined that Ailon-Ailon should not have been detained before trial. On review of the magistrate judge, the district court reversed, ordering that he be detained. The Tenth Circuit concluded that the plain meaning of “flee” refers to a volitional act rather than involuntary removal, and that the structure of the Bail Reform Act supported this plain-text reading. View "United States v. Ailon-Ailon" on Justia Law

Rodriguez entered the U.S. without inspection in 1999. In 2000, her boyfriend obtained a temporary restraining order against her, claiming that he feared for his safety after episodes of domestic violence. Rodriguez later testified that because she had nowhere else to go, and because she had small children and all her belongings in their shared apartment, she did not leave. Rodriguez pleaded no contest to knowingly violating a TRO and to misdemeanor bail jumping. Rodriguez sought cancellation of her removal as an alien continuously present in the U.S. for 10 years, 8 U.S.C. 1229b(b)(1)(A) and “a person of good moral character” during that time, indicating that removal would cause an “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to her five dependent children (including a cancer survivor) and that she had not been convicted of certain enumerated offenses, including violation of a protection order. The IJ decided that Rodriguez’s conviction was determinative, reasoning that Wisconsin law requires a judge to consider the danger posed to a victim and any pattern of abusive conduct by the perpetrator, so a misdemeanor conviction for violating a TRO is “categorically a removable offense.” The BIA and Seventh Circuit rejected her appeals. It does not matter that Rodriguez may not have acted violently by remaining on the premises; her violation of the avoidance-of-residence provision is enough. View "Rodriguez v. Sessions" on Justia Law

DeKelaita provided legal representation for immigrants applying for asylum under 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(42)(A). Applicants for asylum must sit for an interview with a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer and must provide a translator if one is needed. DeKelaita’s clients were primarily Assyrian or Chaldean Christians from Muslim‐ruled countries, such as Iraq. Many had suffered persecution, but their eligibility was doubtful because they either had already found refuge in another county or their history failed to meet the requirements for asylum. For at least nine clients, DeKelaita concealed evidence that the applicant had obtained legal status in a safe country or fabricated information about persecution. At the interview DeKelaita was able to ensure that applicants stuck to the script by coaching interpreters. He was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government and for three false statements he either made or induced on his final (Albqal’s) application. The court vacated the three convictions related to Albqal’s application. The jury unanimously found only one false statement in Albqal’s application, but the court ruled that this statement was immaterial to his receipt of asylum. The court concluded that the government had failed to prove an element of the substantive crimes, leaving only the conspiracy conviction, which the Seventh Circuit affirmed. DeKelaita argued that the government failed to prove an overarching conspiracy. The jury had sufficient evidence to convict DeKelaita for either the charged conspiracy or a subsection of it. View "United States v. Dekelaita" on Justia Law

The question presented in this appeal for the Tenth Circuit's review was whether Petitioner Juan Lucio-Rayos’s municipal theft conviction qualified as a crime involving moral turpitude (“CIMT”), which would have made him ineligible for cancellation of removal. Lucio-Rayos was convicted under a divisible municipal code provision that set forth several different theft offenses, some of which qualified as CIMTs and some of which did not. Applying a modified categorical approach, the Tenth Circuit determined it was not possible to tell which theft offense was the basis of Lucio-Rayos’s conviction. The Court held it was Lucio-Rayos’s burden to establish his eligibility for cancellation of removal, and because the record was inconclusive to this end, the Court upheld the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”)’s determination that Lucio-Rayos did not show that he was eligible for cancellation of removal. Furthermore, the immigration judge (“IJ”) did not deprive Lucio-Rayos of due process by refusing to recuse from hearing his case. View "Lucio-Rayos v. Sessions" on Justia Law