Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-05-03372/USCOURTS-ca8-05-03372-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Michael Chertoff
Respondent
Alberto Gonzales
Respondent
Tomas Munoz-Yepez
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 05-3372

___________

Tomas Munoz-Yepez, *

*

Petitioner, *

*

v. * Petition for Review of an

* Order of the Executive Office

Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General; * for Immigration Review.

Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the *

Department of Homeland Security, *

*

Respondents. *

___________

Submitted: May 17, 2006

Filed: August 30, 2006 

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, JOHN R. GIBSON and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.

___________

LOKEN, Chief Judge.

Tomas Munoz-Yepez, a citizen of Mexico, entered the United States as a lawful

permanent resident in March 1987. He pleaded guilty in state court to possessing a

controlled substance with intent to distribute in October 1994 and to battery of his

girlfriend in July 2004. In September 2004, the Department of Homeland Security

initiated this removal proceeding, alleging that Munoz-Yepez was removable because

his 1994 conviction was an “aggravated felony” and a “controlled substance” offense,

and his 2004 conviction was a “crime of domestic violence.” See 8 U.S.C.

§§ 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), (B)(i), (E)(i). After a hearing, the immigration judge (IJ) found

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Section 212(c) was codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1182(c) (1994). Unless followed

by a year in parentheses, all United States Code citations are to the current edition.

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Munoz-Yepez removable and denied him discretionary relief from removal. The

Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed without opinion. Munoz-Yepez seeks

review of the final agency action, arguing primarily that he is entitled to a permanent

waiver of the adverse consequences of his felony drug conviction under the Supreme

Court’s decision in I.N.S. v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289 (2001). We conclude we have

jurisdiction to consider the issues raised but deny the petition for review.

I.

Before the Immigration & Nationality Act (INA) was substantially amended in

1996, § 212(c)1

 as construed by the BIA afforded a permanent resident alien a

discretionary waiver of deportation if he had lived in the United States for seven

consecutive years and had not been convicted of an “aggravated felony.” Congress

repealed § 212(c) in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act

of 1996 (IIRIRA), Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009 (1996), replacing the

discretionary waiver of deportation with a more limited and still discretionary

cancellation of removal provision. Cancellation of removal is now available to an

alien who has been a lawful permanent resident for at least five years, has resided

continuously in the United States for seven years, and has no conviction for an

expanded universe of aggravated felonies. See INA § 240A, 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(a). 

Applying retroactivity principles, the Supreme Court held in St. Cyr that, if an

alien was eligible for § 212(c) relief when he pleaded guilty prior to IIRIRA, he

remains eligible for that relief. 533 U.S. at 326. Munoz-Yepez was eligible for

§ 212(c) relief in 1994 when he pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute

cocaine. This drug trafficking offense was an aggravated felony when he pleaded

guilty, see 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43) (1994), but he served only fifteen months in prison

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for the offense. An aggravated felony conviction did not preclude § 212(c) relief

unless the alien served a prison term of at least five years. See 8 U.S.C. § 1182(c)

(1994). Thus, under St. Cyr, Munoz-Yepez remains eligible for § 212(c) relief from

removal for that conviction. 

However, Munoz-Yepez is also removable on account of his 2004 conviction

for a crime of domestic violence. If that were the only offense warranting removal,

Munoz-Yepez would be eligible for discretionary cancellation of removal relief under

§ 240A because a domestic violence offense is not an aggravated felony, as currently

defined in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43). The IJ held that Munoz-Yepez is not eligible for

cancellation of removal because he also committed the 1994 drug offense, which was

an aggravated felony. Munoz-Yepez argues that this ruling violates the statutes as

construed in St. Cyr. We reject this contention for two reasons. 

First, cancellation of removal under § 240A is only available to an alien who

“has not been convicted of any aggravated felony.” 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(a)(3) (emphasis

added). Munoz-Yepez’s 1994 drug trafficking offense was an aggravated felony, as

defined in IIRIRA, because he served fifteen months in prison. See 8 U.S.C.

§ 1101(a)(43)(B); 21 U.S.C. §§ 802(13), 841. Munoz-Yepez confuses two distinct

statutory concepts when he argues that his 1994 conviction was not an “aggravated

felony” because he did not serve 5 years in prison. A felony drug trafficking offense

was an aggravated felony under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43), before and after the IIRIRA

amendments. The statutory difference is that an aggravated felony conviction did not

preclude § 212(c) relief unless the alien served 5 years in prison, whereas cancellation

of removal under § 240A is not available if the alien committed an aggravated felony,

which is typically a crime punishable by more than one year in prison. See, e.g., 18

U.S.C. § 3559(a)(5). As Munoz-Yepez committed his domestic violence offense after

§ 240A was enacted, “retroactive” elimination of the 5-year limitation in § 212(c) is

not an issue. IIRIRA expressly provided that the current aggravated felony definition

“applies regardless of whether the conviction was entered before, on, or after

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September 30, 1996.” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43); see St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 319; Brown

v. Ashcroft, 360 F.3d 346, 353-54 (2d Cir. 2004). 

Munoz-Yepez argues that this interpretation of § 240A violates St. Cyr because

the § 212(c) relief to which he is entitled “permanently waives the conviction and

immigration consequences that flow from that particular crime.” We disagree. When

the Attorney General grants discretionary § 212(c) relief, “the crimes alleged to be

grounds for excludability or deportability do not disappear from the alien’s record for

immigration purposes.” Matter of Balderas, 20 I. & N. Dec. 389, 391 (B.I.A. 1991).

Thus, when the alien commits a later offense triggering removal proceedings under

IIRIRA, the prior convictions “remain an aggravated felony for purposes of

precluding his application for cancellation of removal under § 240A.” RodriguezMunoz v. Gonzales, 419 F.3d 245, 248 (3d Cir. 2005). 

Second, cancellation of removal is not available to aliens “previously . . .

granted relief under [INA § 212(c)].” 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(c)(6). Munoz-Yepez argues

that he may avoid this restriction by “simultaneously” adjudicating his claims for

§ 212(c) relief from the drug conviction and for § 240A relief from the domestic

violence conviction. We disagree. Congress intended to deny § 240A relief to aliens

who commit multiple deportable offenses. Therefore, it does not matter when the

discretionary § 212(c) is granted; it disqualifies the alien from § 240A relief for a

second, post-IIRIRA offense. For this reason, Munoz-Yepez’s additional contention

that the IJ violated his right to procedural due process by “holding him ineligible to

file for simultaneous” relief under § 212(c) and § 240A is without merit because he

cannot demonstrate actual prejudice. See Ochoa-Carrillo v. Gonzales, 437 F.3d 842,

847 (8th Cir. 2006). 

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II.

Munoz-Yepez further argues that he may not be removed on account of the

1994 aggravated felony drug conviction because 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) is

limited to convictions “after admission” to the United States, and he came to the

United States in 1987, when prior law used the word “entry.” See 8 U.S.C.

§§ 1101(a)(13), 1251(a)(4) (1990). This contention is without merit. It is based on

the fact that Congress in § 308(f) of IIRIRA substituted the word “admission” for the

word “entry” in the INA (just as it substituted the word “removal” for the word

“deportation”). But IIRIRA expressly defined an “admission” as “the lawful entry of

the alien into the United States after inspection and authorization by the immigration

officer.” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(13)(A) (emphasis added). Moreover, Munoz-Yepez was

removed because of his 2004 conviction for a domestic violence offense, see 8 U.S.C.

§ 1227(a)(2)(E)(i), which occurred after both the enactment of IIRIRA and MunozYepez’s post-1996 “admission” into the United States following a vacation in Mexico

in 1997 or 1998.

III.

We also reject the government’s jurisdiction contention, which we have

deferred to the end of this opinion because jurisdiction turns on the nature of the

issues Munoz-Yepez has raised for our review. The government argues that 8 U.S.C.

§ 1252(a)(2)(C) deprives us of jurisdiction to consider this petition because MunozYepez was removed for a 1994 drug conviction that was “a criminal offense covered

in section . . . 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) [or] (B) . . . of this title.” In the first place, the

argument is misplaced because the IJ explicitly grounded his removal order

exclusively upon Munoz-Yepez’s 2004 conviction for a crime of domestic violence.

Congress did not include this ground for removal in the jurisdiction-stripping

provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2). 

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Moreover, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in St. Cyr, Congress

restored our jurisdiction to review “constitutional claims or questions of law raised

upon a petition for review.” REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-13,

§ 106(a)(1)(A)(iii), 119 Stat. 231, 310 (2005), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D).

Though Munoz-Yepez has failed to persuade us that the IJ misinterpreted the Supreme

Court’s decision in St. Cyr, or the scope of § 212(c) relief, or the meaning of the term

“admission” in the current INA, or his due process right to simultaneous proceedings,

these are questions of law and constitutional claims within the meaning of

§ 1252(a)(2)(D). See Arellano-Garcia v. Gonzales, 429 F.3d 1183, 1185-87 (8th Cir.

2005); Grass v. Gonzales, 418 F.3d 876, 878-79 (8th Cir. 2005); Lopez v. Gonzales,

417 F.3d 934, 936 (8th Cir. 2005), cert. granted on other grounds, 126 S. Ct. 1651

(2006). Thus, we have jurisdiction to review these issues.

For the foregoing reasons, we deny the petition for review. 

______________________________

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