FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ANASTACIO HERNANDEZ-MANCILLA; 

GUADELUPE SIERRA-GUZMAN,

No. 06-73086 Petitioners,

Agency Nos.

v.  A75 758 626 / 625

ERIC H. HOLDER JR., Attorney OPINION General,

Respondent. 

Appeal from the Board of Immigration Appeals

Submitted November 2, 2010*

Pasadena, California

Filed February 10, 2011

Before: Johnnie B. Rawlinson and Milan D. Smith, Jr.,

Circuit Judges, and Robert C. Jones** District Judge.

Opinion by Judge Jones

*The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision

without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). 

**The Honorable Robert C. Jones, United States District Judge for the

District of Nevada, sitting by designation. 

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COUNSEL

John Ayala, Law Office of Cobos & Ayala, Los Angeles, California, for the petitioners-appellants.

Patrick J. Glen, United States Department of Justice, Civil

Division, Washington, D.C., for the respondent-appellee.

OPINION

JONES, District Judge: 

Petitioners Anastacio Hernandez-Mancilla and Guadalupe

Sierra-Guzman are Mexican nationals who entered the United

States illegally on June 15, 1991. (See Opening Br. 4). In February 2001, they engaged CB Immigration Services (“CB”),

who informed them they were eligible to apply for lawful permanent resident status. (Id. 4-5). They paid CB approximately

$5500, and CB submitted asylum applications on their behalf,

resulting in the initiation of removal proceedings. (Id. 5).

They received a notice to appear dated May 3, 2001. (Id.).

The Immigration Judge (“IJ”) ruled that Petitioners were ineligible for cancellation of removal because they had not maintained continuous presence in the United States for a ten-year

span as required by 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(b)(1)(A). (See id.). Petitioners appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals

(“BIA”), which affirmed the IJ, ruling that the ten-year period

under section 1229b could not be equitably tolled for the

alleged fraud by CB, and that the statutory scheme permitting

intermittent absences after a ten-year span but not providing

a grace period to effectively reduce the ten-year requirement

2506 HERNANDEZ-MANCILLA v. HOLDER
where there were no intermittent absences did not violate

Petitioners’ equal protection rights. (See id. 6-7). Petitioners

timely appealed. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C.

§ 1252(b), and we affirm.

I. Standard of Review

When “the BIA conducts an independent review of the IJ’s

findings, we review the BIA’s decision and not that of the IJ.”

Romero-Ruiz v. Mukasey, 538 F.3d 1057, 1061 (9th Cir.

2008). We review the BIA’s factual findings under the deferential substantial-evidence standard and uphold them unless

the evidence compels a contrary result, see Tawadrus v. Ashcroft, 364 F.3d 1099, 1102 (9th Cir. 2004), but we review

purely legal questions de novo, see De Martinez v. Ashcroft,

374 F.3d 759, 761 (9th Cir. 2004). Accordingly, we review

equal protection challenges de novo. See Sandoval-Luna v.

Mukasey, 526 F.3d 1243, 1246 (9th Cir. 2008). The BIA’s

interpretation and application of the immigration laws are

generally entitled to deference, unless the interpretation “is

contrary to the plain and sensible meaning of the statute.”

Almaghzar v. Gonzales, 457 F.3d 915, 920 (9th Cir. 2006).

II. Equitable Tolling of the Ten-Year ContinuousPresence Requirement

[1] An alien who, inter alia, “has been physically present

in the United States for a continuous period of not less than

10 years immediately preceding the date of . . . application”

is eligible for cancellation of removal. 8 U.S.C.

§ 1229b(b)(1)(A). Even if an alien meets this threshold

requirement, however, “[he] shall be considered to have failed

to maintain continuous physical presence . . . if [he] has

departed from the United States for any period in excess of 90

days or for any periods in the aggregate exceeding 180 days.”

Id. § 1229b(d)(2).1 The accrual of continuous presence ends

1Congress first adopted a “brief, casual, and innocent absences” exception in 1986 in reaction to a Supreme Court opinion interpreting the conHERNANDEZ-MANCILLA v. HOLDER 2507
upon the earlier of service with a notice to appear or the commission of certain offenses. Id. § 1229b(d)(1). 

[2] Petitioners entered the United States on June 15, 1991

and received the notice to appear on or about May 4, 2001.

They therefore do not satisfy the ten-year continuouspresence requirement. They argue the end date should be

equitably tolled because the agency they hired to assist them

wrongly informed them that they would be eligible for relief,

and they would not have come to the attention of the authorities had they not taken this bad advice. We reject this argument. See Lara-Torres v. Ashcroft, 383 F.3d 968, 973 (9th

Cir. 2004), amended by 404 F.3d 1105 (9th Cir. 2005).

[3] In Lara-Torres, we ruled that immigration petitioners

cannot base a plea for equity on circumstances external to the

immigration procedures themselves. See id. (“The basic

‘unfairness’ of which the Petitioners complain is that they

never would have been subject to removal proceedings had it

not been for their reliance on Pineda’s unfortunate

immigration-law advice. This ‘unfairness,’ however, did not

taint the ‘fairness’ of the hearing.”). The argument Petitioners

make here is materially identical to the argument the petitioners made in Lara-Torres. They complain that they were

“duped” into entering removal proceedings by CB, and that

the end date of the ten-year continuous-presence requirement

should be equitably tolled from the date they received the

notice to appear until the date they realized they had been

“duped.” In Lara-Torres, we stated broadly: “Removal protinuous presence requirement to permit no exceptions. See Pub. L. 99-603

§ 245A(a)(3)(B), 100 Stat. 3395 (1986) (“An alien shall not be considered

to have failed to maintain continuous physical presence in the United

States . . . by virtue of brief, casual, and innocent absences . . . .”). Congress’s amendment of the statute to its present form in 1996 standardized

the exception. See 5 Charles Gordon et al., Immigration Law and Procedure § 64.04[3][b][I] (Matthew Bender, Rev. Ed. 2010) (citing former 8

U.S.C. § 1254(b)(2)). 

2508 HERNANDEZ-MANCILLA v. HOLDER
ceedings do not become constitutionally unfair simply

because they are precipitated in part by an attorney’s advice

instead of general INS delay, or because the illegal alien

might believe that he could [have] avoid[ed] detection until

eligible for another form of relief.” Id. at 974.2

III. Equal Protection

We review equal protection challenges to federal immigration laws under the rational basis standard and uphold them

if they are “rationally related to a legitimate government purpose.” See Masnauskas v. Gonzales, 432 F.3d 1067, 1071 (9th

Cir. 2005). “Using such rational-basis review, a statute is presumed constitutional, and ‘the burden is on the one attacking

the legislative arrangement to negative every conceivable

basis which might support it.’ ” Id. (quoting Heller v. Doe,

509 U.S. 312, 320 (1993)).

The categories distinguished by the statutory scheme of

§ 1229b are: (1) aliens who have been in the United States for

a span of ten or more years, but whose total presence is as little as nine-and-one-half years when intermittent absences are

discounted; and (2) aliens who have been in the United States

for a span of less than ten years, but whose total presence is

greater than nine-and-one-half years when intermittent

absences are discounted. Petitioners are members of the latter

class. They must negate every conceivable basis for distinguishing them from members of the former class with respect

to eligibility for cancellation of removal.

[4] In the view of Congress, it requires a ten-year span of

living in the United States for a nonpermanent resident to

acquire the connections with the nation that make it appropriate for the Attorney General to consider cancellation of

2Lara-Torres involved a due process-based argument. See 383 F.3d at

973. Here, the argument is for equitable tolling, but it relies on the same

due process rationale. Equitable tolling is simply the remedy requested. 

HERNANDEZ-MANCILLA v. HOLDER 2509
removal. An obvious reason for discounting some amount of

intermittent absence is that an alien who is gone only for short

periods of time—no more than 180 days total and never more

than 90 days at a time—maintains his connection to the nation

during the absence(s). Brief absences amounting to vacations

or business trips are presumed by Congress not to constitute

a change of residence. The absent alien still considers the

United States to be his home during these periods, even if he

is not a citizen and is present illegally. That is why intermittent absences “count” as if the alien were present during them.

But an alien who has not been in the United States for a total

span of ten years has not yet, in Congress’s judgment,

acquired the necessary connections to the nation to make consideration of cancellation of removal appropriate. Congress

need not “count” up to 180 days before an alien actually

arrives in the United States as a grace period where the alien

has not “used” his 180 days of intermittent absences. It is perfectly rational to presume that an alien makes no connection

to the nation before the date he first arrives. And although

Petitioners might argue that Congress should count the days

an alien spends in the United States after receiving a notice

to appear, the two categories of aliens Petitioners identify are

treated the same in this regard.

[5] Unlike aliens who have lived in the United States for

ten or more years despite having taken vacations or business

trips outside of the country, Petitioners had lived in the United

States for fewer than ten years when they received their

notices to appear. It is entirely rational for Congress to require

a ten-year span with exceptions for intermittent absences as

opposed to a total-number-of-days requirement. 

IV. Conclusion

[6] Because equitable tolling is not available based on

alleged unfairness exterior to immigration procedures themselves, Lara-Torres, 383 F.3d at 973, and because there is a

rational basis for distinguishing between aliens who have

2510 HERNANDEZ-MANCILLA v. HOLDER
been present in the United States for different spans of time

even where the aliens have spent the same total number of

days in the United States, the judgment of the BIA is

AFFIRMED.

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