Marcelo Sanchez v. Jefferson Sessions III , 698 F. App'x 740 ( 2017 )

DAVIS, Senior Circuit Judge,

concurring in the judgment:

For me, this is an unusually difficult case, given the stakes involved and the questions it presents. The IJ found Mr. Sanchez credible, but without explaining why, not on the issues that really matter. The judge disbelieved Mr. Sanchez’s testimony that he did not realize until the moment in the hearing when he was confronted with the relevant documentation that he had falsely claimed, while obtaining a North Carolina driver’s license, to be a United States citizen. Without at all casting aspersions on hard-working government employees, anyone who has spent time in a state department of motor vehicles will know that stranger things can happen in such a place than an undocumented immigrant’s innocent execution of a voter registration card.^* Resting op the IJ’s curious credibility assessment, the Board then found that the “recantation” was not timely. But if Mr. Sanchez did not learn of the nature of what he had signed until December 2014, then it is difficult to see why a “recantation” presented in April 2015 could possibly be untimely. I think the title of this story has been taken: “Catch-22.”

* Adding to the mystery of why Mr, Sanchez would knowingly and falsely attest to his United States citizenship (by virtue of signing the registration card) is that in response to a question on the very same card of whether he would be 18 years of age on or before election day, a box was checked, "no.” This fact begs the question whether Mr. Sanchez was aware of his false claim of citizenship at the time of signing, for why would he knowingly make a false representation of U.S. citizenship for the benefit of voting if he answers a related question in a way that renders him ineligible to vote? This fact also highlights the potentially tragic consequences of clerical mistakes at the DMV — it is incredibly disheartening that even a hard-working clerk would file a voter registration card with such internal inconsistencies and that this card, on its own, would justify the deportation of a man, the enduring loss of a father, husband, and productive member of the community, with no history of voting.