Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca3-10-01875/USCOURTS-ca3-10-01875-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Attorney General United States of America
Respondent
Junior Nathaniel Ricketts
Petitioner

Document Text:

PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

_____________

Nos. 10-1875/2400

_____________

JUNIOR NATHANIEL RICKETTS

a/k/a Junior Mohammed Ricketts

a/k/a Paul Milton Miles, 

 Petitioner

v.

ATTORNEY GENERAL UNITED STATES OF 

AMERICA,

 Respondent

On Petition for Review of an Order of the

United States Department of Justice

Board of Immigration Appeals

(BIA 1:A027-024-434)

Immigration Judge: Hon. Walter A. Durling

_______________

Argued

February 6, 2020

Before: JORDAN, GREENAWAY, JR., and FISHER, 

Circuit Judges

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(Filed: April 8, 2020)

_______________

Noah M. Weiss [ARGUED]

Williams & Connolly

725 12th Street, NW

Washington, DC 20005

 Counsel for Petitioner

John M. McAdams, Jr.

Benjamin M. Moss [ARGUED]

Erik R. Quick

United States Department of Justice

Office of Immigration Litigation 

P.O. Box 878

Ben Franklin Station

Washington, DC 20044

_______________

OPINION OF THE COURT

_______________

JORDAN, Circuit Judge.

Junior Ricketts petitions for review of two decisions by 

the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), denials of a 

motion to reopen and a motion to reconsider. He has told

various adjudicatory bodies for nearly 30 years that he is an 

American citizen. Last year, the United States Court of 

Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a district court finding

that he is not. Since his citizenship claim is the only basis on 

which he says he is entitled to relief from the order of removal, 

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and since he cannot now rely on that claim, we will deny the 

petition for review. 

I. Background

Ricketts, whom the government has always maintained 

is a citizen of Jamaica, has been convicted of several felonies;

hence his immigration difficulties. On December 17, 1992, he

was charged, among other crimes, with embezzlement and 

transporting a minor in interstate or foreign commerce with the 

intent to engage in sexual activity. He pled guilty to all charges

and, as an additional consequence of his criminal convictions,

was deemed subject to removal.

In proceedings before an Immigration Judge (“IJ”), 

however, Ricketts argued that he was actually a U.S. citizen. 

The IJ rejected that claim, and the BIA dismissed his appeal. 

He petitioned our court for review and, at the same time, sought 

a stay of removal. While the petition and the motion for a stay

were pending, Ricketts was removed to Jamaica, and his

petition and motion were “procedurally terminated without 

judicial action.” Clerk Order, Ricketts v. Attorney General, 

No. 00-3270 (3d Cir. Jul. 31, 2000).

Continuing to insist that he is an American, Ricketts 

persuaded the Jamaican Constabulary Force to investigate his 

citizenship status. Officials there agreed with him and,

accordingly, he was sent back to the United States in February 

2003, approximately three years after he was removed.

In 2005, while Ricketts was in state custody for a 

criminal theft conviction, the Department of Homeland 

Security learned of his return and reinstated his order of 

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removal. Four years later, he received a copy of the Jamaican 

report stating that he is an American citizen and not a Jamaican 

citizen. With that evidence in hand, he filed with the BIA 

motions to reopen his removal proceedings and to reconsider

the existing order of removal – the motions at issue now.

1

 The 

BIA dismissed both motions, asserting that, because of a 

regulatory provision known as the post-departure bar, 8 C.F.R. 

1 In 2006, Ricketts had filed a petition for review of the 

reinstated order of removal with this Court. We dismissed the 

case because “our duty to dismiss untimely claims is 

mandatory where the Attorney General objects on the basis of 

untimeliness.” Order, Ricketts v. Attorney General, No. 06-

4612 (3d Cir. Apr. 16, 2007). That year Ricketts also filed two 

motions to reopen with the BIA, asking the BIA to exercise its 

sua sponte authority to reconsider his initial order of removal. 

The BIA denied both of those motions as untimely. Ricketts 

asked the BIA to reissue its denial of those motions, which it 

declined to do. Those earlier motions are not before us.

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§ 1003.2(d), it lacked jurisdiction.2

 Ricketts again petitioned 

for review.

3

 

At the parties’ request, we stayed this case several 

times.4

 Then, at their joint request, we transferred the case to 

2 The “post-departure bar” is found in 8 C.F.R. 

1003.2(d), and states as follows:

A motion to reopen or a motion to reconsider 

shall not be made by or on behalf of a person who 

is the subject of exclusion, deportation, or 

removal proceedings subsequent to his or her 

departure from the United States. Any departure 

from the United States, including the deportation 

or removal of a person who is the subject of 

exclusion, deportation, or removal proceedings, 

occurring after the filing of a motion to reopen or 

a motion to reconsider, shall constitute a 

withdrawal of such motion.

3 To be precise, Ricketts filed two petitions for review, 

one for his motion to reopen and one for his motion to 

reconsider. We consolidated the two cases and, for ease of 

reference, speak of the petitions in the singular. 

4 From June 2011 to May 2014, this case was stayed 

pending Ricketts’s criminal proceedings in the United States 

District Court for the Western District of New York under 18 

U.S.C. § 911 for “falsely and willfully represent[ing] himself 

to be a citizen of the United States[,]” among other crimes. 

(Joint Motion to Hold Proceedings in Abeyance dated Jun. 10, 

2011, Ricketts v. Attorney Gen., No. 10-1875.) That case was 

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the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New 

York (“EDNY”), the district where Ricketts resides, to resolve 

disputed facts concerning his claim of American citizenship,

pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5)(B). (Joint Motion dated 

1/13/2015, Ricketts v. Attorney Gen., No. 10-1875.) We held 

the petition for review in abeyance pending the resolution of 

the citizenship question, including any appeal of that decision. 

The whole basis of Ricketts’s citizenship claim is his 

assertion that he was born in Brooklyn on August 31, 1964 as 

Paul Milton Miles. He says he changed his name for religious 

reasons. To substantiate his claim that he is Paul Milton Miles, 

he submitted various official records, including a birth 

certificate in that name, with the name crossed out and “Junior 

Mohammed Ricketts” written above it. The EDNY found that 

Ricketts’s evidence was not credible and that the government’s 

evidence proving Ricketts is not a U.S. citizen was persuasive.5

 

resolved when he pled guilty to witness tampering. The other 

charges were dismissed. 

5 That is putting it mildly. Among other things, the 

Court concluded that “only one person named Paul Milton 

Miles was born in Brooklyn New York” from 1955 to 1970, 

and that person is the son of Lizzie Mae Page Miles and Robert 

Miles, Jr. Ricketts v. Lynch, No. 15-cv-00329, 2016 WL 

3676419, at*2 (E.D.N.Y. Jul. 7, 2016). At deposition, Lizzie 

Mae Page Miles identified her son, Paul Milton Miles, who 

“was physically present in the room” and who is not Junior 

Ricketts. Id. at *3. For a more complete recitation of the 

evidence Ricketts and the government presented regarding 

Ricketts’s citizenship claims, see id. at *2-*5.

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Ricketts v. Lynch, No. 15-cv-00329, 2016 WL 3676419 

(E.D.N.Y. Jul. 7, 2016). The Second Circuit affirmed that 

decision, and subsequently denied Ricketts’s motion to 

reconsider the affirmance. Ricketts v. Barr, No. 18-2244, 2019 

WL 938996 (2d Cir. Feb. 26, 2019); Ricketts v. Barr, No. 18-

2244, 2019 WL 1858373 (2d Cir. Apr. 25, 2019).

Next, we lifted the stay in this case and ordered 

supplemental briefing to “address[ ] the validity of the 

departure bar regulation and the impact, if any, of the Second 

Circuit’s decision” on these proceedings. (Order dated 

8/28/19, Ricketts v. Attorney Gen., 10-1875.) In supplemental 

briefing, Ricketts argued that we must remand to the BIA 

because it improperly contracted its jurisdiction when, in 

applying the post-departure bar, it dismissed his appeal for lack 

of jurisdiction. The government argued in response that 

remand would be futile, since the BIA cannot grant Ricketts

relief from removal on the ground that he is a citizen, as that 

claim has been foreclosed by the rulings of the EDNY and

Second Circuit. We agree with the government that remand 

would be futile, so we will focus solely on that and not address 

whether the BIA erred in stating that the post-departure bar 

deprived it of jurisdiction. 

II. Discussion

Even if the BIA erred when it characterized the postdeparture bar as a restriction of its jurisdiction,

6 we may forgo

6 At oral argument, the government emphasized that the 

BIA decisions at issue here are some ten years old, and it 

intimated that the BIA has ended the practice of dismissing for 

lack of jurisdiction under the post-departure bar, perhaps under 

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remanding this case if a remand would be futile. Under S.E.C.

v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80 (1943), a court will generally 

dispose of an administrative law case only on the grounds cited 

by the pertinent agency, but remand for further agency action 

is unnecessary when “only one disposition is possible as a 

matter of law.” George Hyman Const. Co. v. Brooks, 963 F.2d 

1532, 1539 (D.C. Cir. 1992). As the Supreme Court has noted, 

Chenery “does not require that we convert judicial review of 

agency action into a ping-pong game.” NLRB v. WymanGordon Co., 394 U.S. 759, 766 n.6 (1969). When only one 

outcome is possible, “[i]t would be meaningless to remand.” 

Id. Such circumstances are sometimes described as 

constituting the “remand futility” exception to the general rule

laid down in Chenery. 

Ricketts tries to resist application of the remand futility 

exception by arguing first, that we have not previously held 

that the exception applies in immigration proceedings, and 

second, that remand futility is rare and the exception should not 

be applied when jurisdiction is in question. 

the weight of circuit court decisions saying it could not

properly do so. See Santana v. Holder, 731 F.3d 50 (1st Cir. 

2013) (holding that the “post-departure bar cannot be used to 

abrogate a noncitizen’s statutory right to file a motion to 

reopen,” id. at 61, and collecting cases from six courts of 

appeals holding the same and three courts of appeals striking 

“down the regulation as an impermissible contraction of the 

agency’s jurisdiction[.]” Id. at 54-55.). Since it is a most 

serious question whether the BIA may restrict its jurisdiction, 

as it did here, we hope that is the case.

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It is true that we have not expressly held that the remand 

futility exception applies in the immigration context, but we 

have suggested as much. For example, in Nbaye v. Attorney 

General, 665 F.3d 57 (3d Cir. 2011), the government argued 

that remand would be futile because the alien could not avoid 

removal. We rejected that argument because there was in that 

case at least one scenario in which “remand surely would not 

have been futile[,]” but we did not dispute that the remand 

futility exception could have application in the right 

circumstances. Id. at 59-60. The government also cites 

immigration cases from outside our Circuit in which courts 

have explicitly recognized the remand futility exception. See

Gonzales-Veliz v. Barr, 938 F.3d 219, 235 (5th Cir. 2019) 

(holding in the alternative that remand would be futile because 

the alien could not prevail under the legal standard); Shou Wei 

Jin v. Holder, 572 F.3d 392, 396 (7th Cir. 2009) (“Although 

the IJ’s legal error gives us pause-and a different record may 

well have justified a remand-a remand would be futile in this 

case because [the noncitizen] presented no evidence [to 

support his claims].”). 

This case gives us an opportunity to say what others 

have said and we have only suggested before: namely, that 

when remand would be futile – meaning the BIA on remand 

would be unable as a matter of law to grant the relief sought –

we may deny a petition for review, without regard to the 

various issues that might otherwise be in play in the case. That

indeed is our holding today. 

The only argument Ricketts raised in his motions to 

reopen and to reconsider is that he was a United States citizen 

and therefore not removable. The Second Circuit, based on the 

thoughtful work done by the EDNY, has conclusively 

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determined that Ricketts is not a United States citizen. The 

BIA is bound by that decision as a matter of law. See BaezSanchez v. Barr, 947 F.3d 1033, 1036 (7th Cir. 2020) (“Once 

[a United States Court of Appeals] reach[es] a conclusion, both 

the Constitution and the statute require[ ] the [BIA] to 

implement it.”). Even if it were not, both issue preclusion and 

claim preclusion would apply here, with the same result. See 

Duvall v. Attorney Gen., 436 F.3d 382, 391 (3d Cir. 2006) 

(“Collateral estoppel [, or issue preclusion,] generally applies 

when the same issue was previously litigated by the same 

parties and was actually decided by a tribunal of competent 

jurisdiction.”); Duhaney v. Attorney Gen., 621 F.3d 340, 347 

(3d Cir. 2010) (“Res judicata, also known as claim preclusion, 

bars a party from initiating a second suit against the same 

adversary based on the same ‘cause of action’ as the first 

suit.”). Since the BIA cannot grant Ricketts relief from 

removal on the basis that he is a citizen, remand would be 

futile. 

III. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, we will deny Ricketts’s

petition for review. 

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