Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-19-02375/USCOURTS-ca7-19-02375-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
William P. Barr
Respondent
Haiyan Chen
Petitioner

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 19-2375

HAIYAN CHEN,

Petitioner,

v.

WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General of the United States,

Respondent.

____________________

Petition for Review of an Order of the

Board of Immigration Appeals.

No. A089-283-398.

____________________

ARGUED MARCH 3, 2020 — DECIDED MAY 29, 2020

____________________

Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Haiyan Chen, a citizen of 

China, entered the United States without inspection (that is, 

by stealth) in 2004. She was detected in 2010, and immigration officials opened removal proceedings. The charging 

document is called a “Notice to Appear,” and a form with 

that caption was dated April 27, 2010. The form did not meet 

the statutory requirements for a Notice to Appear, however, 

because it omiaed the time and place for a hearing. See 8 

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U.S.C. §1229(a)(1)(G)(i); Pereira v. Sessions, 138 S. Ct. 2105 

(2018). Immigration officials sent Chen a separate document, 

dated July 29, 2010, with that information. Chen appeared as 

ordered, and many other hearings followed. She asked for 

asylum, which an immigration judge denied on the ground 

that 8 U.S.C. §1158(a)(2)(B) gives aliens only one year after 

entering the United States to request that relief. The Board of 

Immigration Appeals dismissed her appeal on March 28, 

2017, and we denied a petition for review. Chen v. Sessions, 

No. 17-1797 (7th Cir. Jan. 4, 2018) (nonprecedential).

In September 2018 Chen filed a motion asking the Board 

to reopen her case so that she could seek cancellation of removal, a remedy available to some aliens who have lived in 

the United States for a decade. She recognized that the motion was untimely—a statute allows only 90 days after the 

Board’s original decision, see 8 U.S.C. §1229a(c)(7)(C)(i)—but 

asked for the benefit of equitable tolling. She also recognized 

that she had not sought cancellation of removal during the 

original proceedings, even though they continued past the 

tenth anniversary of her arrival. She contended that, until 

the Supreme Court issued Pereira in June 2018, neither she 

nor her lawyers recognized that she might be eligible for that 

relief. Pereira opened their eyes, and Chen contended that 

she should receive its benefit.

The potential bearing of Pereira is this: although an alien 

accumulates years of physical presence starting from the 

date of entry, two events stop the accumulation of time. 8 

U.S.C. §1229b(d)(1). Commission of a crime that renders an 

alien inadmissible is one, and service of a Notice to Appear 

under §1229(a) is the other. Chen and her lawyer assumed 

that the document she received in April 2010 stopped the acCase: 19-2375 Document: 33 Filed: 05/29/2020 Pages: 9
No. 19-2375 3

crual of time, but Chen’s motion to reopen argued that Pereira holds otherwise and that the time continued to run—

indeed, that it is still running, because §1229b(d)(1) does not 

make entry of a final removal order a stop-time event.

The Board assumed without deciding that Chen is entitled to equitable tolling of the 90-day limit to seek reopening. 

It denied the motion on the merits, however. A recent decision, Ma9er of Mendoza-Hernandez, 27 I.&N. Dec. 520 (BIA 

2019) (en banc), holds that the required components of a Notice to Appear need not be in a single document. As long as 

multiple documents collectively provide the information required by statute, they may be treated as a Notice to Appear, 

effective on the date of the document that supplied the last 

required piece of information. Mendoza-Hernandez understood Pereira to hold that multiple notices cannot be combined with the effective date of the first document, but not to 

address what happens once all information has been provided. Mendoza-Hernandez held that the time stops once the alien has all of the information required by statute.

Two courts of appeals have agreed with MendozaHernandez. See Garcia-Romo v. Barr, 940 F.3d 192 (6th Cir. 

2019); Yanez-Pena v. Barr, 952 F.3d 239 (5th Cir. 2020). Two 

have disagreed. See Guadalupe v. A9orney General, 951 F.3d 

161 (3d Cir. 2020); Banuelos-Galviz v. Barr, 953 F.3d 1176 (10th 

Cir. 2020). Another initially rejected Mendoza-Hernandez, see 

Lopez v. Barr, 925 F.3d 396 (9th Cir. 2019), but vacated that

decision and set the maaer for hearing en banc. 948 F.3d 989 

(9th Cir. 2020). Chen wants us to side with Guadalupe and

Banuelos-Galviz and to disapprove Garcia-Romo, Yanez-Pena, 

and Mendoza-Hernandez.

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The parties have engaged in many subsidiary debates, 

such as whether Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), applies to the Board’s 

interpretation of sections 1229(a) and 1229b(d)(1)(A). See INS 

v. Aguirre-Aguirre, 526 U.S. 415 (1999) (holding that Chevron

applies to many of the Board’s decisions interpreting statutes governing immigration issues). There is a debate about 

the singular versus the plural: Chen observes that §1229(a) 

speaks of “a” notice, while the Aaorney General points to 

the Dictionary Act, 1 U.S.C. §1, under which the singular and 

plural are equivalent unless the context requires otherwise. 

See also Rowland v. California Men’s Colony, Unit II Men’s Advisory Council, 506 U.S. 194 (1993) (only the linguistic context 

maaers for this purpose). We conclude, however, that it is 

not necessary to address these subjects or decide whether we 

agree with Mendoza-Hernandez on the merits. There is an antecedent procedural obstacle.

Pereira addressed a proceeding in which the alien had requested cancellation of removal as part of the initial proceeding. Pereira did not receive an effective notice with a date for 

a hearing until after he had been in the United States for 13 

years. (An earlier notice, sent to the wrong address, did not 

count.) As soon as he received effective notice of a hearing, 

Pereira sought cancellation of removal. That is what led the 

Court to ask whether a document with the caption “Notice 

to Appear,” but lacking a time and place for a hearing, satisfies the statute. The Justices concluded that all of the statutorily required information is essential, and Pereira won because (a) he did not get that information until after he had 

been in the United States for more than 10 years, and (b) he 

requested cancellation of removal at the first opportunity.

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No. 19-2375 5

Chen did not do that. She was in removal proceedings 

well past her tenth anniversary of arrival but did not seek 

cancellation of removal until after we denied her petition for 

review. Although Pereira raised in 2013 the argument that 

prevailed before the Supreme Court in 2018, Chen did not 

ask for relief until after Pereira had been decided.

She is not alone. After Pereira this circuit was inundated 

by requests to apply that decision to closed immigration cases, on the ground that a defective charging document deprives the agency of jurisdiction to order an alien’s removal. 

We addressed that argument in Ortiz-Santiago v. Barr, 924 

F.3d 956 (7th Cir. 2019), holding:

The requirement that a Notice include, within its four corners, 

the time, date, and place of the removal proceeding is not “jurisdictional” in nature. It is instead the agency’s version of a claimprocessing rule, violations of which can be forfeited if an objection is not raised in a timely manner.

Id. at 958. Ortiz-Santiago entered without inspection in 1999 

and, after removal proceedings began in 2015, sought cancellation of removal. But although by 2015 Pereira had been 

making his argument for two years, Ortiz-Santiago did not 

contest the sufficiency of the document captioned Notice to 

Appear. An Immigration Judge, and the Board, concluded 

that Ortiz-Santiago had not established the degree of hardship that could support relief under §1229b. (He had been in 

the United States for more than a decade before removal 

proceedings began, so the Notice to Appear did not maaer 

for stop-time purposes.) Only after Pereira had been decided

did Ortiz-Santiago assert that his proceedings had been invalid from the outset. That was too late, we held. A problem in 

the charging document could and should have been pointed 

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out promptly, so that any error could be fixed. Ortiz-Santiago

wrapped up:

Relief will be available for those who make timely objections, as 

well as those whose timing is excusable and who can show prejudice.

924 F.3d at 965. We denied the petition for review, without a 

remand, because the defect “was a failure to follow a claimprocessing rule”. Id. at 966.

This brings us to Chen. Ortiz-Santiago at least sought 

cancellation of removal in the original removal proceeding, 

though he failed to make the sort of argument that carried 

the day in Pereira. Chen neither made a Pereira-like argument 

nor sought cancellation of removal. Given the conclusion in 

Ortiz-Santiago that a defect in the charging document is not a 

jurisdictional defect, we ask (as Ortiz-Santiago itself did) 

whether Chen made a timely objection or can show excusable delay and prejudice.

The answer to all three is “no.” Chen did not object to the 

charging documents for years, until after Pereira had been 

decided. (In this respect Chen and Ortiz-Santiago are alike.) 

She does not have a good excuse for delay. True enough,

Dababneh v. Gonzales, 471 F.3d 806, 809–10 (7th Cir. 2006), 

held that a “Notice to Appear” is valid if a date is provided 

later, but Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 622–23 (1998), 

holds that adverse precedent in a local court of appeals does 

not excuse omiaing a legal argument, unless it is one a

knowledgeable lawyer could not have imagined. See also 

United States v. Manriquez-Alvarado, 953 F.3d 511, 513–14 (7th 

Cir. 2020) (holding that this principle applies to Pereira and 

§1229(a)).

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Chen cannot show prejudice either. She does not contend 

that she lacked actual knowledge of the time and place for 

the hearing. She not only received notice but also appeared 

(with counsel) in Chicago at 9 a.m. on December 14, 2011, as 

scheduled. If Chen had objected before or at that hearing to 

the deficiency in the Notice, the agency could have cured 

that problem on the spot, and the hearing would have continued. (That was true in Manriquez-Alvarado too.) Chen has 

never argued that she was prejudiced by the delivery of the 

statutory information in two documents rather than one. (A 

cure in December 2011 would have stopped time before 

Chen reached 10 years’ presence.)

Although Ortiz-Santiago thus appears to spell doom for 

Chen’s position, we asked at oral argument whether the 

principle of SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 87–88 (1943), 

blocks us from deciding on a ground that the Board did not 

mention. We invited and have received supplemental briefs

on that subject. We now make explicit what the panel in

Ortiz-Santiago assumed: failure to raise an issue properly before an agency is not the sort of maaer that an agency must 

consider. Judges must permit agencies to address and resolve those issues that may make judicial review inappropriate or unnecessary. But when failure to present an issue to 

an agency furnishes a good reason to deny a petition for judicial review, a Chenery-style remand is unnecessary.

Exhaustion of administrative remedies provides an example. Exhaustion is a condition of judicial review in immigration cases, 8 U.S.C. §1252(d)(1), but not a subject within 

the scope of Chenery. When an alien fails to raise an issue on 

time, in the right way, or at all, before the Immigration Judge 

and the Board of Immigration Appeals, the court denies the 

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petition for review under §1252(d)(1) without sending the 

proceeding back to ask the Board what it thinks about the 

subject. A procedural forfeiture is an adequate reason to end 

the process of judicial review. That’s what has occurred here: 

Chen took far too long to contest the adequacy of the charging document, just as Ortiz-Santiago did. If Chen had advanced a plausible argument that she suffered prejudice, we 

would remand for the Board to consider that possibility. But, 

as we have mentioned, Chen aaended every scheduled hearing and does not explain how the use of two documents rather than one prejudiced her. It is the agency that potentially 

suffers prejudice from Chen’s delay: the problem could have 

been fixed in 2010 or 2011 or 2012 or 2013, before Chen had 

been in the United States for a decade.

There is another way to read Ortiz-Santiago. Perhaps the 

court bypassed Chenery because any possible error was 

harmless. That is an established reason for deciding without 

remand. See Cronin v. Department of Agriculture, 919 F.2d 439, 

442–43 (7th Cir. 1990) (futile remands are unnecessary); Borovsky v. Holder, 612 F.3d 917, 920–21 (7th Cir. 2010) (remand 

is unnecessary when it would lead to a finding of harmlessness). If an application of the harmless-error rule is the best 

way to understand Ortiz-Santiago, the doctrine is equally applicable to Chen’s situation. The Board rejected Chen’s argument under Mendoza-Hernandez, finding that the two documents added up to one valid Notice to Appear. Forfeiture 

would have been an alternative ground of decision, here as 

in Ortiz-Santiago. By ignoring the problem when it could 

have been fixed, Chen bypassed the benefit of the claimprocessing rule. A person who allows a procedural error to 

lurk in the record until the 10 years have passed, and brings

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No. 19-2375 9

it to light only then, has surrendered any opportunity for judicial relief.

The petition for review is denied.

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