NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

APOLINAR FIGUEROA-VARGAS, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 19-50244 

D.C. No. 

3:18-cr-03171-MMA-1 

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of California

Michael M. Anello, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted August 13, 2020

Pasadena, California

Before: WARDLAW and VANDYKE, Circuit Judges, and CHOE-GROVES,**

Judge.

Apolinar Figueroa-Vargas (Figueroa) appeals his conviction by jury trial for 

being a removed alien found in the United States, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326, 

and the district court’s denial of his motion to dismiss the indictment pursuant to 8 

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

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

** The Honorable Jennifer Choe-Groves, Judge for the United States 

Court of International Trade, sitting by designation.

FILED

OCT 21 2020

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
2 

U.S.C. § 1326(d). We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We affirm. 

“We review de novo a claim that a defect in a prior removal proceeding 

precludes reliance on the final removal order in a subsequent § 1326 proceeding.” 

United States v. Reyes-Bonilla, 671 F.3d 1036, 1042 (9th Cir. 2012). Such a claim

requires the defendant to show that, among other things, “the removal order was 

fundamentally unfair.” United States v. Valdivia-Flores, 876 F.3d 1201, 1205 (9th 

Cir. 2017). A removal order based on a prior conviction for an “aggravated 

felony” is “fundamentally unfair” if that conviction was not in fact an aggravated 

felony. Id. at 1206; see also id. at 1210. 

Here, we employ the categorical approach and “compare the elements of the 

state offense with the elements of the federal generic offense of sexual abuse of a 

minor.” Mero v. Barr, 957 F.3d 1021, 1022 (9th Cir. 2020) (cleaned up). The 

applicable federal generic definition of “sexual abuse of a minor” encompasses

statutes of conviction that prohibit “(1) sexual conduct, (2) with a minor, (3) that 

constitutes abuse.” Id. at 1023. 

Though on its face, Texas Penal Code § 22.021 (2003) reaches conduct 

beyond this generic definition, that statute is divisible. Section 22.021 defines 

multiple aggravated sexual assault crimes through distinct combinations of the 

alternative elements listed in § 22.021(a)(1) (the conduct elements) and 

§ 22.021(a)(2) (the aggravating elements). See Moreno v. State, 413 S.W.3d 119, 
3 

128–29 (Tex. App. 2013); Gonzales v. State, 304 S.W.3d 838, 847–49 (Tex. Crim. 

App. 2010). Subsection 22.021(a)(2)(B)—which asks whether the victim “is 

younger than 14 years old”—is “itself an aggravating element under the statute 

sufficient to constitute aggravated sexual assault of a child.” Moreno, 413 S.W.3d

at 129; see id. at 128–29 (noting the trial court “instructed the jury that a person 

commits aggravated sexual assault of a child if he commits sexual assault and the 

victim is younger than 14 years of age”). 

Because this statute “lists elements in the alternative, and thereby defines 

multiple crimes,” we employ the modified categorical approach. Mathis v. United 

States, 136 S. Ct. 2243, 2249 (2016) (cleaned up). The judgment from Figueroa’s 

prior conviction defined his offense as “Agg Sex Asslt Child-Under 14.” 

Moreover, the Texas indictment accused him of “intentionally and knowingly 

causing the sexual organ of the victim, a person younger than fourteen years of age 

and not the spouse of the Defendant, to CONTACT [his] SEXUAL ORGAN.” His 

crime was thus the one defined by the combination of the elements in 

§ 22.021(a)(1)(A)(iii) and § 22.021(a)(2)(B), which falls within the federal generic 

definition of sexual abuse of a minor and is an aggravated felony. 

As a result, Figueroa’s 2001 removal order was not fundamentally unfair, 

and the district court correctly denied his motion to dismiss the indictment.

AFFIRMED.