to promote the diligent prosecution of offenses so just like with the offense of entry when an alien affirmatively presents himself to immigration officials we expect that those officials will use reasonable diligence in the protection of the public assess that individual status and if they don't this court should hold consistent with its sister circuits that the government has five years to rectify its mistake and if they fail to do so then the government should bear the burden of the statute of limitations running against it now with respect to the facts of this case as the th circuit found in garcia and the government's own experts in this case state that after about the time that immigration officials approve an i one hundred and thirty dollars petition they have a duty to search an individual's name and using data furth social security place of birth to assess whether the individual has been deported whether they have an a number so this case ultimately is about what does it mean to search a name and specifically who should bear the burden for the government's failure to catch its one letter phonetic misspelling particularly in field they're foreign sounding names people are often illiterate they don't speak english the government knows that the records are replete with phonetic misspellings so they have built a basic safety net feature into their central database now the government would have us believe that when an alien affirmatively presents himself to immigration officials and says i'm living in this country i came here illegally that immigration officials routinely willfully with ignore the basic safety net feature that they've built into the system to catch the phonetic misspellings of their agents in the field now that defies credibility and i would note the government has the burden here to prove that it brought this case within the statute of limitations none of its experts are willing to say that searching a name means literally searching just the exact letter combinations that an alien present's them and turning a blind eye to the basic safety that feature that they've built in to the central doubt of a system now we don't just have to use common sense here we know that it is neither onerous or unusual to do a competent name search that produces the phonetic misspelling the immigration knows their agents make and we can see that because within weeks of the nd i won thirty petition immigration officials had done a competent name search which was producing the phonetic spelling of the individual's name so we're not saying that immigration had to move with haste that they did with respect to the nd petition but we are saying that within five years of getting the petition which is when they approved it they did have a duty to do a cop that name search using the basic safety net features that they've built into their system to address the problem that they are very well aware of and even if they didn't do it within five years they had an additional ten years and they're still with outside the statute of limitations so whatever reasonable diligence means allowing immigration officials a decade to catch their own one letter  misspelling i think particularly when here they had both the individual's date of birth social security place of birth allowing them a decade to catch their own mistake i think is the bare minimum of reasonable diligence that we would expect of our immigration officials if congress's goal of promoting the diligent prosecution of offenses means anything at all i think it has to mean that the statute of limitations should run against immigration and specifically the government in this case are there any additional questions  good morning your honor is may please the court ross pearson from the united states before turn to why legally immigration officials aren't required by reasonable diligence diligence to run similar name searches i want to point out that the similar name search that was run in this case did not do what mendoza merino seems to assume it would have done in two thousand and six dollars and what i mean by that is that in two thousand and fifteen immigration officials ran a similar name search for the name groomer seem to go with an r it did not find the two thousand  petition for mendoza merinos birth name which was and so there's a lot made about the fact that these are only one letter off but there's no record that shows that if the search had been run in two thousand and six it actually would have found that he was deported in time until he was charged in this indictment that he actually used his birth name turning to why reasonable diligence doesn't require immigration officials to run these similar names searches the courts that have defined the reasonable diligence standard say that it requires officials to run the searches they would normally run in process and in gratian petition and in the record in this case there are declarations from both experts who say immigration officials and screening i want thirty petitions run searches for the name date of birth and country of origin and this case that was done it was done in two thousand and fifteen when immigration officials ran the actual name mendoza merinos daughter presented and found the exact match from his nine hundred and ninety deportation and it was also run in two thousand and six when immigration officials ran the exact names that mendoza merinos brother presented and because they had never been used before they weren't able to find the  deportation and that's directly from this court's not this court the th circuit palomino garcia case which discusses the standard for reasonable diligence what it's required and it specifically says that i  thirty's the standard is lower because it's just the st step in a lengthy process that will later include applications for later adjustment of status and perhaps even naturalization all of which are points where the alien misspelling his fingerprints might be found at the st stage of i one hundred and thirty s it's only screening for the aliens birth relationship with the petitioner so that was done in this case the immigration officials in two thousand and six followed reasonable diligence that's required and even if reasonable diligence does require a similar name search there's no evidence in the record that that similar name search if it had been run in two thousand and six would have worked  reasonable diligence and if there's some constructive knowledge of a person's presence then the statute would start to run our  the court doesn't need to reach that issue here because it's similar to the movie zero case where even if this court decided to define what reasonable diligence means it's not and that in this case if the court did reach it it would be our position that  constructive knowledge would be required thank you if the court has no further issues we would ask ms for there is a circuit split on that issue or yes your honor and this court ha suggested that it would follow the majority of circuits and apply a reasonable diligence standard but again this case isn't the right case for the court to decide because even if the court went down that road and defined reasonable diligence under that definition the definition that other courts have adopted that standard would not be met here ok thank you thank  there's only one name that has been used here the reason there are multiple spellings of that name is the immigrations officials phonetic misspelling of the name and with respect to garcia garcia the government's correct step forth a minimum standard that minimum standard is that when the i one hundred and thirty dollars petition is approved immigration officials have a duty to assess the individual status in this country by doing competent name searches so figuring out whether someone has previously been deported has an a number which is exactly what they did in garcia which wasn't done here the government is willing to pool let me just ask you to clarify something on the point you argue you sounds the same and so it is a phonetic misspelling it is very difficult to distinguish grammar sindo and groom us and oh and so that's it's understandable why both social security added in our why immigration officials added an  and that's why there's a safety net feature that is built in to the system the government wants to rely on the fact that they've produced one page of the results of the search now we don't exactly know we don't know all the results but we certainly know the end result which we so we don't know exactly how the sausage was made but we know that they had the means the tools and the duty they didn't do that here the government should bear the burden of the statute of limitations running against it in this case thank