NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

OSWALDO MANGAS, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 19-50319 

D.C. No. 

3:19-cr-00550-BAS-1 

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of California

Cynthia A. Bashant, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 7, 2022

Pasadena, California

Before: LIPEZ,** TALLMAN, and LEE, Circuit Judges.

Concurrence by Judge LEE.

Oswaldo Mangas appeals his conviction following a conditional guilty plea to 

being a removed person found unlawfully in the United States, in violation of 

8 U.S.C. § 1326. He argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

** The Honorable Kermit V. Lipez, United States Circuit Judge for the 

First Circuit, sitting by designation.

FILED

MAR 28 2022

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
2 

dismiss the indictment. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we 

reverse. 

In 2009, Mangas was convicted of voluntary manslaughter under Cal. Penal 

Code § 192(a). He was placed in administrative removal proceedings1in 2010, on 

the basis that he was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States 

and that his voluntary manslaughter conviction was for a crime of violence 

constituting an aggravated felony. See 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) (“Any alien 

who is convicted of an aggravated felony at any time after admission is 

deportable.”); 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F) (designating as an aggravated felony “a 

crime of violence . . . for which the term of imprisonment [is] at least one year”). 

He was served with and executed a DHS waiver form, in which he checked two 

boxes indicating that he did not wish to contest the allegations or seek judicial 

review, and he was ordered removed the same day.

Mangas was subsequently found in the United States in January 2019 and 

indicted in February 2019 for being a removed person found unlawfully in the 

United States. He moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that his 2010 removal 

order was invalid and therefore could not support a conviction under § 1326. See 8 

1 Administrative removal refers to a streamlined removal process, without an 

appearance before an immigration judge, for individuals who are alleged not to be 

citizens or lawful permanent residents and who are alleged to have aggravated felony 

convictions. See 8 U.S.C. § 1228(b); 8 C.F.R. § 238.1. 
3 

U.S.C. § 1326(d).

We review a collateral attack on a removal order de novo. United States v. 

Lopez–Velasquez, 629 F.3d 894, 896 (9th Cir. 2010) (en banc). To succeed on a 

collateral attack, a defendant must demonstrate “(1) that he exhausted all 

administrative remedies available to him to appeal his removal order, (2) that the 

underlying removal proceedings at which the order was issued improperly deprived 

him of the opportunity for judicial review, and (3) that the entry of the order was 

fundamentally unfair.” United States v. Ubaldo-Figueroa, 364 F.3d 1042, 1048 (9th 

Cir. 2004). A removal order is fundamentally unfair if the defendant’s “due process 

rights were violated by defects in the underlying deportation proceeding,” and he 

experienced prejudice as a result. United States v. Aguilera-Rios, 769 F.3d 626, 630 

(9th Cir. 2014) (quoting United States v. Pallares-Galan, 359 F.3d 1088, 1095 (9th 

Cir. 2004)). 

Mangas argues that he has satisfied the first two requirements for a collateral 

attack on a removal order because his purported waiver of the right to contest the 

charges against him had not been knowing, voluntary, and intelligent. In United 

States v. Valdivia-Flores, 876 F.3d 1201 (9th Cir. 2017), relied on by Mangas, we 

held that a judicial waiver form that failed to inform the noncitizen that “he could 

refute . . . the legal conclusion underlying his removability” could not by itself 

establish an informed waiver of either administrative or judicial review. Id. at 1206.
4 

The government concedes that the waiver form signed by Mangas was identical to 

the form at issue in Valdivia-Flores, and that, accordingly, Mangas has demonstrated 

that he exhausted his administrative remedies and was deprived of the opportunity 

for judicial review. Mangas has therefore met the first two requirements for a

collateral attack on an order of removal, and, pursuant to Valdivia-Flores, the district 

court erred in holding otherwise.

With respect to the predicate conviction, the government has conceded that, 

pursuant to Quijada-Aguilar v. Lynch, 799 F.3d 1303, 1306-07 (9th Cir. 2015), 

voluntary manslaughter under Cal. Penal Code § 192(a) is not a categorical crime of 

violence under the definition set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 16(b) because it may be 

committed with reckless intent. Thus, as the district court properly held, Mangas’

conviction under Cal. Penal Code § 192(a) cannot support the asserted basis of the 

removal order. See Quijada-Aguilar, 799 F.3d at 1306-07.

The prejudice inquiry is also governed by Valdivia-Flores. There we held, on 

analogous facts, that the defendant had been prejudiced because his predicate 

conviction had been misclassified in his administrative removal proceedings and 

could not support the “asserted basis” for his underlying removal order. 876 F.3d at 

1210. That reasoning controls here. We reached a similar conclusion where the 

government misclassified a lawful permanent resident's underlying conviction. See 

United States v. Ochoa-Oregel, 904 F.3d 682, 685-86 (9th Cir. 2018) (“[E]ven if the 
5 

government might have been able to remove [the defendant] on other grounds 

through a formal removal proceeding, [the defendant’s] removal on illegitimate 

grounds is enough to show prejudice.”). 

The sole basis of Mangas’ 2010 removal order was the purported aggravated 

felony conviction. The district court erred in requiring Mangas to show prejudice 

by demonstrating a plausible basis for relief from removal on a ground other than 

the one underlying his 2010 removal order. Accordingly, Mangas should have 

prevailed in his collateral attack on the 2010 removal order.

2

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

2 The government has requested that, if we find prejudice, we remand for an 

evidentiary hearing regarding the circumstances of Mangas’ purported waiver of 

judicial review in 2010. That request is denied. The government bore the burden of 

proving a valid waiver by clear and convincing evidence. See United States v. 

Ramos, 623 F.3d 672, 680-81 (9th Cir. 2010). It failed to make that showing when 

it had an opportunity to do so. 
1

19-50319, United States v. Mangas

LEE, Circuit Judge, with whom TALLMAN, Circuit Judge, joins, specially 

concurring:

Although our circuit’s case law compels the outcome here, I write separately 

to highlight our apparently inadvertent shift from an individualized prejudice inquiry 

to a presumption of prejudice for collateral attacks under 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d).

To show fundamental unfairness under § 1326(d), a defendant “must 

demonstrate plausible grounds for relief from deportation.” United States v. GarciaMartinez, 228 F.3d 956, 963 (9th Cir. 2000). We presume prejudice in some cases 

when—but for the government’s misclassification of an underlying felony—the 

defendant would not otherwise be removable. For example, lawful permanent 

residents suffer prejudice because it “deprive[s] [them] of the important protections 

of legal permanent resident status.” United States v. Martinez-Hernandez, 932 F.3d 

1198, 1205 (9th Cir. 2019).

In United States v. Valdivia-Flores, we appear to have inadvertently extended 

this presumption of prejudice to non-permanent residents who have no plausible 

basis for remaining here. 876 F.3d 1201 (9th Cir. 2017). In that case, ValdiviaFlores repeatedly entered the United States without inspection after being deported. 

Id. at 1203–04. On his fourth attempt to illegally reenter the United States, he was 

charged with one count of attempted reentry of a removed alien in violation of 8 

U.S.C. § 1326. Id. at 1204. He then collaterally attacked his removal order. Id. at 

FILED

MAR 28 2022

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
2

1205. Much of Valdivia-Flores focused on whether a due process violation occurred 

under § 1326(d)(2) and whether his state drug-trafficking conviction qualified as an 

aggravated felony. After resolving those two issues in favor of Valdivia-Flores, the 

opinion then concluded that he was “prejudiced from his inability to seek judicial 

review for that removal.” Id. at 1210. Perhaps because prejudice was not fully 

briefed and teed up before the court, the opinion did not offer any analysis other than 

that single statement presuming prejudice.

We later clarified that “the central issue” in determining “fundamental 

unfairness” under § 1326(d)(3) is “whether a defendant was removed when he 

should not have been.” Martinez-Hernandez, 932 F.3d at 1204 (internal quotation 

marks omitted). There, the defendants collaterally attacked their removal orders, 

arguing that their convictions no longer qualified as a crime of violence. Id. at 1202.1

 

We distinguished Valdivia-Flores: the defendants were not removed on “illegitimate 

grounds” because “the same convictions require removal under a different section 

of the same statute previously invoked.” Id. at 1205 & n.2 (emphasis added).

1 Relying on our decision in United States v. Ochoa-Oregel, (9th Cir. 2018), the 

defendants in Martinez-Hernandez argued that once error occurs in the original 

removal order, the government cannot later argue that a defendant could have been 

removed on other grounds. Id. at 1204. The court explained, however, that OchoaOregel was “fundamentally different” because the defendant in Ochoa-Oregel was 

a legal permanent resident. Id. at 1204–05. 
3

After Valdivia-Flores and Martinez-Hernandez, we are apparently left with 

the rule that if the government misclassifies the underlying felony, the removal order

is presumed fundamentally unfair under § 1326(d). That presumption can be 

rebutted if the government (i) can show that the conviction qualifies for removability 

under a different section of the same statute (i.e., the INA), or (ii) charged the alien

with another valid ground for removal.

Here, our inquiry ends with holding that Mangas’s conviction no longer 

qualifies as a crime of violence. Though Mangas has repeatedly entered the country 

without inspection, DHS did not charge him with entering the United States without 

inspection. Nor has the government shown that Mangas’s voluntary manslaughter 

conviction qualifies for removability under a different section of the INA.

The government argues that Mangas is not prejudiced by the defects in his

removal order because he would have been removed anyway. That is true: Mangas 

never had any lawful basis for entering the country, repeatedly entered unlawfully 

after being removed, and even today has no plausible basis for remaining here. But 

we are still required to hold that Mangas’s removal order was fundamentally unfair

under our precedent of presumed prejudice. I thus believe we need to revisit our 

seemingly accidental precedent.