Arias Minaya v. Holder , 779 F.3d 49 ( 2015 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 13-2537
CARLOS MANUEL ARIAS-MINAYA,
Petitioner,
v.
ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERAL,
Respondent.
PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE
BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Souter,* Associate Justice,
and Selya, Circuit Judge.
Jeffrey B. Rubin, Allan M. Tow, and Rubin Pomerleau, P.C. on
brief for petitioner.
Stuart F. Delery, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division,
Eric W. Marsteller, Senior Litigation Counsel, and Juria L. Jones,
Trial Attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation, on brief for
respondent.
February 27, 2015
*
Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
SELYA, Circuit Judge. Petitioner Carlos Manuel Arias-
Minaya seeks judicial review of a final order of the Board of
Immigration Appeals (BIA) denying his request for voluntary
departure. After careful consideration, we deny the petition in
part and dismiss it in part for want of jurisdiction.
I. BACKGROUND
The relevant facts are easily assembled. The petitioner,
a Dominican national, overstayed after entering the United States
in 2005 on a six-month visitor's visa. In 2009, the Department of
Homeland Security commenced removal proceedings. See 8 U.S.C.
§ 1227(a)(1)(B). The petitioner conceded removability and cross-
applied for adjustment of status, see id. § 1255, or voluntary
departure, see id. § 1229c.
While the immigration proceedings were pending, the
petitioner was arrested and charged in a Massachusetts state court
with one count of assault with a dangerous weapon (a knife) and
three counts of threatening to commit murder. See Mass. Gen. Laws
ch. 265, § 15B(b); id. ch. 275, § 2. The charges arose from a
domestic disturbance. The record indicates that when the officers
arrived at the scene, the complaining witness (the mother of the
petitioner's two children) told the police that the petitioner had
repeatedly threatened to kill both her and her children, first by
telephone and then in person. The police arrested the petitioner,
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and a state court thereafter granted the complaining witness a
restraining order.
One of the police officers prepared a report documenting
the events surrounding the petitioner's arrest. This report
chronicled statements made by both the complaining witness and the
petitioner.1
In the immigration court, the petitioner abandoned his
claim for adjustment of status. He continued, however, to press
his claim for voluntary departure. The police report was
introduced into evidence. At the end of the hearing, the
immigration judge (IJ) determined that, even though the criminal
charges against the petitioner were still pending in state court,
there was no reason to find the police report inaccurate or lacking
in probative value. In the IJ's view, the police report reliably
disclosed a "very disturbing set of facts" and the petitioner
presented a "direct an[d] immediate danger to both his children and
the mother of his children." The IJ concluded that these negative
factors far outweighed any positive factors and, thus, the
petitioner did not warrant a favorable exercise of discretion in
the form of voluntary departure. An order for removal followed.
The petitioner appealed to the BIA. While the appeal was
pending, the criminal charges were dismissed because the
1
The petitioner reportedly told the police that he "was
crazy" and "wanted [the police] to arrest him."
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complaining witness failed to appear. The petitioner thereupon
asked the BIA to remand the matter to the IJ for reconsideration.
The BIA obliged, acknowledging that the IJ had relied on the
criminal charges in denying the petitioner's request for voluntary
departure.
On remand, the IJ invited the petitioner to submit a
declaration describing his version of the events surrounding the
arrest. The petitioner declined the invitation. In reconsidering
his earlier decision, the IJ noted that the dismissal of the
criminal charges occurred only because the complaining witness had
failed to appear for trial. The IJ further observed that the
petitioner had offered no reason to doubt either the reliability of
the police report or the truth of the facts set forth therein. The
IJ concluded that the police report was probative, that reliance on
it was appropriate under the circumstances, that the negative
factors weighing against voluntary departure (principally, those
related to the events described in the police report) outweighed
any positive factors, and that an exercise of discretion in the
petitioner's favor was therefore unwarranted.
The petitioner again appealed to the BIA. This time
around, the BIA affirmed the IJ's denial of voluntary departure.
In doing so, it concluded that the IJ had not afforded undue weight
to the facts contained in the police report because the police
report was probative of factors relevant to the discretionary
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analysis and the petitioner was given every opportunity to refute
the report's contents. This timely petition for judicial review
followed.
II. ANALYSIS
Voluntary departure is a discretionary form of relief.
See 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(a)(1), (b)(1). It benefits both the
government and the alien by enabling the former to expedite
repatriation and the latter to avoid some of the harsh strictures
that typically accompany removal. See Naeem v. Gonzales, 469 F.3d
33, 36-37 (1st Cir. 2006).
An alien may request voluntary departure either in lieu
of removal, see 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(a)(1), or at the conclusion of
removal proceedings, see id. § 1229c(b). In either event, the
alien must show that he meets the relevant statutory requirements
and that he merits a favorable exercise of discretion. See id.
§ 1229a(c)(4)(A); Matter of Arguelles-Campos, 22 I&N Dec. 811, 817
(BIA 1999); 8 C.F.R. § 1240.26(b)-(c). The record is murky as to
whether the petitioner sought voluntary departure under section
1229c(a)(1) or section 1229c(b). Here, however, we need not probe
this point: the statutory eligibility requirements are not in
issue, and the agency refused to grant voluntary departure solely
as a matter of discretion.
Against this backdrop, we turn to the petitioner's claims
of error. Because the BIA adopted and affirmed the IJ's decision
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yet supplied its own gloss, we review the tiered decisions as a
unit. See Ramirez-Matias v. Holder, ___ F.3d ___, ___ (1st Cir.
2015) [No. 14-1056, slip op. at 5].
We start with the recognition that our jurisdiction to
review decisions denying discretionary relief from removal is
narrowly circumscribed. As a general rule, a federal court may not
review the agency's discretionary decisionmaking in an immigration
case (including orders granting or denying voluntary departure).
See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(B)(i); Dada v. Mukasey, 554 U.S. 1, 11
(2008). "But this rule, like virtually every other general rule,
admits of exceptions." Ramirez-Matias, ___ F.3d at ___ [slip op.
at 7]. We may review such decisions to the extent that the
assigned errors raise colorable constitutional claims or questions
of law. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D); Ramirez-Matias, ___ F.3d at
___ [slip op. at 7].
Whether a claim fits within the confines of one of these
exceptions depends on substance, not on form. See Ayeni v. Holder,
617 F.3d 67, 70-71 (1st Cir. 2010). "A bare allegation of either
a constitutional shortfall or legal error will not transmogrify an
unreviewable issue of fact into an issue reviewable by the courts."
Id. at 71.
The petitioner here makes two related claims: he says
that the IJ's and the BIA's decisions not only reflect an abuse of
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discretion but also are tainted by legal error.2 With respect to
the latter claim, he submits that the agency either ignored or
misconstrued applicable precedents by relying on a police report
that never culminated in a conviction and consisted mainly of
untrustworthy "double-hearsay statement[s]."
The petitioner's first claim — abuse of discretion — is
beyond the scope of judicial review. It amounts to nothing more
than a challenge to the way in which the IJ (and, on appeal, the
BIA) weighed the facts. As such, the claim is reminiscent of the
claim presented in Ramirez-Matias, where the alien argued that the
agency gave police reports "too much weight" and failed properly to
assess their "probative value." ___ F.3d at ___ [slip op. at 8].
We dismissed that claim for want of jurisdiction, holding that the
petitioner's attack on the agency's discretionary decisionmaking
was "hopelessly factbound." Id. at ___ [slip op. at 8]. Ramirez-
Matias is controlling here. Accordingly, we dismiss the
petitioner's abuse of discretion claim for want of jurisdiction.
2
In his reply brief, the petitioner makes yet a third claim:
that his procedural due process rights were violated. This claim
is twice foreclosed. For one thing, the petitioner failed to raise
any due process argument before the BIA and, thus, we lack
jurisdiction to consider such an argument now. See Wan v. Holder,
___ F.3d ___, ___ (1st Cir. 2015) [Nos. 13-1893, 14-1285, slip op.
at 7] (explaining that an alien must exhaust all administrative
remedies to confer jurisdiction on a federal court). For another
thing, the due process argument surfaced for the first time in the
petitioner's reply brief and, therefore, has been waived. See
Jupiter v. Ashcroft, 396 F.3d 487, 491 n.5 (1st Cir. 2005);
Sandstrom v. ChemLawn Corp., 904 F.2d 83, 86 (1st Cir. 1990).
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See id. at ___ [slip op. at 9]; see also Castro v. Holder, 727 F.3d
125, 129-30 (1st Cir. 2013) (concluding that court lacked
jurisdiction since petitioner's claims on appeal merely attacked
factual findings); Ayeni, 617 F.3d at 72-73 (concluding that
argument about weight afforded certain factors in a discretionary
analysis was essentially attack on factual finding that did not
raise reviewable constitutional or legal question); Elysee v.
Gonzales, 437 F.3d 221, 223-24 (1st Cir. 2006) (concluding that
claims that IJ disregarded certain factors and overvalued others
did not raise colorable constitutional or legal questions).
While we lack jurisdiction to review the petitioner's
claim that the agency abused its discretion in weighing the
evidence, we may have jurisdiction to review his claim that the
agency should not have considered the police report at all. This
claim posits that the agency either ignored or misconstrued
applicable precedents in failing to exclude as a matter of law a
police report that consisted mainly of hearsay statements and
described an arrest that never culminated in a conviction. As
framed, this claim asks us to determine the contours of a legal
standard governing the use of evidence; and "the choice and shape
of an applicable legal standard is quintessentially a question of
law." Ayeni, 617 F.3d at 71.
A case that aptly illustrates the dichotomy between the
petitioner's legal standard claim and his abuse of discretion claim
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is Barrera-Quintero v. Holder, 699 F.3d 1239 (10th Cir. 2012).
There, the petitioner argued that the BIA misconstrued prior BIA
precedents in determining whether he had voluntarily departed. See
id. at 1244-45. The Tenth Circuit exercised jurisdiction to review
the claimed legal error with respect to the interpretation of
relevant precedents. See id. at 1245. But the court declined to
reach the ultimate question of the petitioner's eligibility for
discretionary relief, concluding that this question was so
factbound as to fall outside the scope of judicial review. See id.
at 1246-47.
Nor is this the first time that we have considered a
single petition for judicial review that presents related claims
that arguably fall on different sides of the jurisdictional divide.
In Gonzalez-Ruano v. Holder, 662 F.3d 59 (1st Cir. 2011), the
petitioner assigned error to the BIA's consideration of a prior
state court criminal conviction in the discretionary evaluation of
his request for special rule cancellation of removal. See id. at
64. We exercised jurisdiction to review the petitioner's legal
claim concerning the BIA's interpretation of the relevant statute
to ensure that the statute permitted consideration of the prior
conviction. See id. Once we determined that the conviction was
appropriately considered, however, we ruled that we lacked
jurisdiction to review the agency's weighing of that conviction in
the discretionary decisionmaking calculus. See id. at 64-65.
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The issue in this case, however, is whether the legal
standard claim advanced by the petitioner is colorable. That issue
is close, but we need not grapple with it. Assuming, for
argument's sake, that the petitioner's claim is colorable and that
we therefore have jurisdiction to consider it, the claim is easily
repulsed on the merits.
On this understanding, we review de novo the putatively
colorable legal question of whether it was permissible for the
agency to consider the police report. See Gonzalez v. Holder, 673
F.3d 35, 38 (1st Cir. 2012). We hold that there was no error in
considering the police report even though it contained hearsay and
the petitioner's arrest did not result in a conviction.
We do not write on a pristine page. As an initial
matter, it is settled beyond hope of contradiction that in
reviewing requests for discretionary relief, immigration courts may
consider police reports even when they rest largely on hearsay.
See Henry v. INS, 74 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 1996). There are, of
course, limits — but those limits are generally satisfied as long
as the trier first determines that the report is reliable and that
its use would not be fundamentally unfair. See Matter of Teixeira,
21 I&N Dec. 316, 321 (BIA 1996); Matter of Grijalva, 19 I&N Dec.
713, 721-22 (BIA 1988). The applicable precedents were properly
applied here. To begin, the IJ determined (and the BIA confirmed)
that the police report was reliable and probative of the
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petitioner's character. Similarly, both the IJ and the BIA
determined that use of the police report was not fundamentally
unfair since the petitioner was given an opportunity to challenge
its veracity and refute its contents.
As long as the nature and stage of the proceedings are
taken into account — as they were here — the case law does not
categorically preclude the agency from considering a police report
simply because the arrest detailed therein has not resulted in a
conviction. See Henry, 74 F.3d at 6-7; White v. INS, 17 F.3d 475,
479-80 (1st Cir. 1994); Matter of Thomas, 21 I&N Dec. 20, 23-24
(BIA 1995). In Henry, for example, we sanctioned the agency's
reliance on facts contained in a police report though the charges
were still pending. See 74 F.3d at 5-7. We reasoned that, in the
context of determining whether an alien warrants discretionary
relief from removal, the fact of an arrest and its attendant
circumstances, without more, may have probative value in assessing
his character (and, thus, his suitability for discretionary
relief).3 See id. at 6.
3
We note that both Henry and White were decided before
Congress stripped the federal courts of the power to review
discretionary decisions in immigration cases. See Illegal
Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Pub. L.
No. 104-208, Div. C, Title III, § 306(a)(2), 110 Stat. 3009-546,
3009-607. Though decided under an earlier regime, those decisions
remain apposite insofar as they construe BIA precedent relevant to
the legal question of whether the agency may consider police
reports in making discretionary determinations.
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The petitioner asserts that Matter of Arreguin, 21 I&N
Dec. 38 (BIA 1995), requires a different result. This assertion is
groundless. While the BIA in that case afforded little weight to
an arrest that did not result in prosecution, see id. at 42, we
previously have explained that the decision in Arreguin rested on
idiosyncratic facts and the case surely does not create an ironclad
rule that an arrest without a subsequent conviction may never be
considered in the discretionary relief context. See Henry, 74 F.3d
at 6.
We conclude, therefore, that there is no per se bar to
the agency's consideration of hearsay-laden police reports where
convictions have not followed.4 Other courts have reached the same
conclusion. See, e.g., Paredes-Urrestarazu v. INS, 36 F.3d 801,
810 (9th Cir. 1994); Parcham v. INS, 769 F.2d 1001, 1005 (4th Cir.
1985). It follows that neither the IJ nor the BIA committed any
legal error by considering the police report describing the
petitioner's arrest as a negative factor weighing against
discretionary relief.
4
We note that such a rule seems especially uncontroversial
where, as here, the charges against the petitioner were dropped
only because the complaining witness failed to appear for trial and
any concern for fundamental fairness was fully addressed by
affording the petitioner ample opportunity to challenge or refute
the report.
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III. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,
the petition for review is denied in part and dismissed in part.
So Ordered.
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