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Matched Legal Cases: ['§\u20021182', '§\u20021252', '§\u20021158', '§\u20021101', '§\u2002208', '§\u20021252', '§\u20021229', '§\u20021229', '§\u20021229', '§\u20021252', '§\u20021252', '§\u20022341', '§\u20022349', '§\u20021229', '§\u20021229', '§\u20021252', '§\u20022349', '§\u20021252', '§\u20021240', '§\u20021229', '§\u20021229', '§\u20021240', '§\u20021182', '§\u2002309']

BOCOVA v. GONZALES | FindLaw
BOCOVA v. GONZALES
Artur BOCOVA, Petitioner, v. Alberto GONZALES, Attorney General, Respondent.
No. 04-2175.
Before SELYA, Circuit Judge, COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge, and HOWARD, Circuit Judge. Ilana Greenstein, with whom Harvey Kaplan, Maureen O'Sullivan, Jeremiah Friedman, and Kaplan, O'Sullivan & Friedman, LLP were on brief, for petitioner. Beth Werlin for American Immigration Law Foundation, amicus curiae. John Andre, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, with whom Peter D. Keisler, Assistant Attorney General, and Donald E. Keener, Deputy Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, were on brief, for respondent.
In December of 2000, the petitioner, using a fraudulent Greek passport, left Albania for Greece. He resided in Athens with his uncle for approximately four months. In early 2001, the Albanian police came looking for him at his parents' home; when informed that he was not there, a policeman reportedly replied, “tell him not to come back here any more.”
B. Procedural History.
The petitioner applied for asylum on April 13, 2002. Shortly thereafter, the government initiated removal proceedings against him, charging that he was present in the United States without legal sanction. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1182(a)(6)(A)(i), 1182(a)(7)(A)(i). At a preliminary hearing before an immigration judge (IJ), the petitioner conceded removability and cross-applied for asylum or withholding of removal. The IJ convened an evidentiary hearing on January 10, 2003. After both sides had rested, she denied the petitioner's requests for relief and ordered his removal. Concomitantly, she granted him a sixty-day period within which to depart voluntarily from the United States.
We turn first to the petition for judicial review. We focus on the petitioner's asylum claim because a claim for withholding of removal “places a more stringent burden of proof on an alien than does a counterpart claim for asylum.” Rodriguez-Ramirez v. Ashcroft, 398 F.3d 120, 123 (1st Cir.2005) (citing Makhoul v. Ashcroft, 387 F.3d 75, 82 (1st Cir.2004)). Thus, if the petitioner's asylum claim fails on the merits, his counterpart claim for withholding of removal fails as well. See id.
In evaluating the BIA's denial of asylum, our review is aimed at determining whether the agency's decision is supported by substantial evidence in the record. Da Silva v. Ashcroft, 394 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir.2005). Under that regime, we must accept the BIA's findings of fact, including credibility determinations, as long as they are “supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on the record considered as a whole.” INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 481, 112 S.Ct. 812, 117 L.Ed.2d 38 (1992). The substantial evidence standard is not petitioner-friendly; under it, the BIA's fact-based determination of an alien's entitlement to asylum must be upheld unless “any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.” 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B). In other words, vacatur requires that the evidence “point[ ] unerringly in the opposite direction.” Laurent v. Ashcroft, 359 F.3d 59, 64 (1st Cir.2004).
To qualify for asylum, an applicant bears the burden of establishing that he is a “refugee” within the meaning of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). See 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1); see also Makhoul, 387 F.3d at 79. An applicant can carry this burden either by proving past persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, or by demonstrating a well-founded fear of future persecution on account of one of these five grounds. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A); 8 C.F.R. § 208.13(b); see also Makhoul, 387 F.3d at 79. An alien must satisfy both a subjective and an objective test in order to prove a well-founded fear of future persecution. “That is to say, the asylum applicant's fear must be both genuine and objectively reasonable.” Aguilar-Solis v. INS, 168 F.3d 565, 572 (1st Cir.1999).
Persecution is a protean word, capable of many meanings. Cf. United States v. Romain, 393 F.3d 63, 74 (1st Cir.2004) (explaining that some “words are like chameleons” in that they may “have different shades of meaning depending upon the circumstances”). Because the word “persecution” is not defined by statute, it is in the first instance the prerogative of the Attorney General, acting through the BIA, to give content to it. See Aguirre-Aguirre, 526 U.S. at 424, 119 S.Ct. 1439. We are thus bound to accept the BIA's view of what constitutes persecution unless that view amounts to an unreasonable reading of the statute or inexplicably departs from the BIA's earlier pronouncements. Davila-Bardales v. INS, 27 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.1994).
For the most part, the BIA has eschewed the articulation of rigid rules for determining when mistreatment sinks to the level of persecution, preferring instead to treat the issue on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. See, e.g., In re L-K-, 23 I. & N. Dec. 677, 683 (BIA 2004); In re O-Z- & I-Z-, 22 I. & N. Dec. 23, 25-26 (BIA 1998). That is a legitimate praxis. See SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U.S. 194, 202-03, 67 S.Ct. 1575, 91 L.Ed. 1995 (1947) (holding that agencies may implement statutes that they administer case-by-case). Indeed, given the nearly infinite diversity of factual circumstances in which asylum claims arise, it would be difficult to develop meaningful generalities that could easily be applied to a broad spectrum of cases. See Aguilar-Solis, 168 F.3d at 569-70.
That the BIA has chosen to take each case as it comes in deciding whether an alien has demonstrated persecution does not mean that we are left without any guidance. We have held that mistreatment ordinarily must entail more than sporadic abuse in order to constitute persecution. See Nelson v. INS, 232 F.3d 258, 263 (1st Cir.2000) (explaining that “unpleasantness, harassment, and even basic suffering” are not enough). By the same token, mistreatment can constitute persecution even though it does not embody a direct and unremitting threat to life or freedom. See Aguilar-Solis, 168 F.3d at 569-70. An important factor in determining where a specific case falls along this continuum is whether the mistreatment can be said to be systematic rather than reflective of a series of isolated incidents. See O-Z- & I-Z-, 22 I. & N. Dec. at 26. We consistently have upheld this gloss as a legitimate reading of the INA. See, e.g., Rodriguez-Ramirez, 398 F.3d at 124; Nelson, 232 F.3d at 263-64.
We add, moreover, that on these facts, the BIA's rejection of the petitioner's claim of past persecution is consistent with other cases presenting comparable facts, in which courts-including this court-have upheld denials of asylum. See, e.g., Gishta v. Gonzales, 404 F.3d 972, 978-80 (6th Cir.2005) (finding supportable the BIA's determination that members of the ADP who suffered sporadic beatings and jailings had not demonstrated past persecution); Dandan v. Ashcroft, 339 F.3d 567, 573-74 (7th Cir.2003) (upholding a finding of no persecution despite a serious beating and a three-day detention); Guzman v. INS, 327 F.3d 11, 15-16 (1st Cir.2003) (affirming the BIA's determination that a serious beating did not amount to persecution). Although we, if writing on a pristine page, might have decided the question differently, we are constrained by the standard of review: the evidence is not conclusive either way and, thus, a reasonable adjudicator would not be compelled to reach a particular conclusion. We therefore find that the BIA's determination-that the petitioner was not subject to past persecution-is sufficiently supported by the record. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B); see also Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. at 481, 112 S.Ct. 812; Laurent, 359 F.3d at 64.
That leaves the likelihood of future persecution should the petitioner be deported to Albania. As to this facet of the asylum analysis, the petitioner's only evidence-apart from the past indignities mentioned above-is his hearsay account of the police officers' visit to his parents' home after he had left the country. When the police were informed that the petitioner had departed, they reportedly replied that his parents should “tell him not to come back here.” The BIA deemed this cryptic comment insufficient to establish a well-founded fear of future persecution and that conclusion is readily sustainable.
The short of it is that there are a multitude of possible explanations for the officers' visit. And even if we were to assume, without a scintilla of evidence, that the petitioner's political beliefs sparked the visit-an inference that the BIA declined to draw-that assumed fact would not compel a finding that the visit gave rise to an objectively reasonable fear of future persecution. See, e.g., Flores-Castro v. INS, No. 98-71136, 2000 WL 1335524, at *1 (9th Cir. Sept.14, 2000) (upholding a finding that an alien had not established a reasonable fear of future persecution based on a visit by the police to his mother's house, in which the police had made no specific threats); Milosevic v. INS, 18 F.3d 366, 371 (7th Cir.1994) (agreeing that petitioner had not established a well-founded fear of future persecution based on a visit to his wife's house in which the police asked for the petitioner); cf. Makhoul, 387 F.3d at 81-82 (refusing to set aside the BIA's conclusion that the petitioner had failed to show a reasonable fear of future prosecution based on the arrest of one of his compatriots). To cinch matters, the petitioner has given us no reason to question the BIA's determination that, in Albania today, there is no pattern of persecution of similarly situated persons, such that the petitioner reasonably could expect to be persecuted upon his return.
III. VOLUNTARY DEPARTURE
We start with first principles. Voluntary departure is a discretionary form of relief that allows an alien who is subject to a deportation order a period of time in which to leave the country of his own volition. If adhered to, voluntary departure produces a win-win situation. It benefits the government by expediting departures and eliminating the costs associated with deportation. See Rife v. Ashcroft, 374 F.3d 606, 614 (8th Cir.2004). It benefits the alien because it allows him to choose the destination to which he will travel and to avoid the penalties attendant to removal (thereby easing a possible return to the United States).1 See id. Voluntary departure, however, is not a one-way street: its benefits come with attendant responsibilities. An alien who fails to leave the country within the allotted departure period faces sanctions, including forfeiture of the required bond, a fine of up to $5,000, and a ten-year period of ineligibility for certain forms of relief under the INA. See 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(a)(3), (b)(3), (d); see also Lopez-Chavez v. Ashcroft, 383 F.3d 650, 651 (7th Cir.2004).
Before the effective date of the IIRIRA, this court's practice was to reinstate voluntary departure privileges in appropriate cases. See Umanzor-Alvarado v. INS, 896 F.2d 14, 16 (1st Cir.1990) (Breyer, J.). The IIRIRA materially changed the ground rules for voluntary departure by stripping the courts of appeals of jurisdiction to review BIA decisions as to whether to grant voluntary departure and, if so, for how long. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1229c(f), 1252(a)(2)(B)(i). We have not heretofore determined the viability of our authority to reinstate a period of voluntary departure in a post-IIRIRA world. We do so today.
Two of our post-IIRIRA opinions (both involving the same alien) furnish useful background. In Khalil v. Ashcroft, 337 F.3d 50 (1st Cir.2003) (Khalil I ), we followed our historic practice and reinstated the petitioner's voluntary departure period without considering the IIRIRA's effect on our authority to do so.2 Id. at 56. Khalil chose not to quit while he was ahead and overstayed his freshly minted voluntary departure period. We were then faced with the question, inter alia, of whether our reinstatement of the voluntary departure period functioned retroactively to forgive his disregard of the voluntary departure deadline originally set by the BIA. We concluded that the reinstatement did not so operate, but declined to address the government's argument that the reinstatement itself was a nullity because the court had no authority to grant such relief. Khalil v. Ashcroft, 370 F.3d 176, 177, 179-80 (1st Cir.2004) (Khalil II ). We nonetheless acknowledged the issue as open to future consideration and advised the immigration bar to take pains to protect whatever rights aliens might have to preserve voluntary departure privileges. See id. at 182.
The matter of reinstatement is open and shut. All of the courts of appeals to resolve the issue thus far have concluded that they no longer may reinstate expired periods of voluntary departure. See Mullai v. Ashcroft, 385 F.3d 635, 639-40 (6th Cir.2004); Rife, 374 F.3d at 616; Ngarurih v. Ashcroft, 371 F.3d 182, 192-93 (4th Cir.2004); Reynoso-Lopez v. Ashcroft, 369 F.3d 275, 280-81 (3d Cir.2004); Sviridov v. Ashcroft, 358 F.3d 722, 731 (10th Cir.2004); Zazueta-Carrillo v. Ashcroft, 322 F.3d 1166, 1174 (9th Cir.2003). We agree with these decisions and hold that we no longer have the authority, at the conclusion of judicial review, either to fashion a new voluntary departure period or to reinstate an expired one.
Our reasoning is straightforward. The IIRIRA worked a sea change in the federal courts' authority over voluntary departure orders by withdrawing from the courts jurisdiction to review grants or denials of voluntary departure. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1229c(f), 1252(a)(2)(B)(i). It also relegated to the Attorney General the sole authority to determine the length of a voluntary departure period, including any extensions thereof. See id. § 1252(a)(2)(B)(i). Reinstating an expired voluntary departure period is functionally equivalent to fashioning a new voluntary departure period; doing so would require the court to dictate both the length of the period and the time when it would begin to run (thus effectively overriding the Attorney General's decision). See Mullai, 385 F.3d at 640; Zazueta-Carrillo, 322 F.3d at 1172-73. That would be an impermissible circumvention of Congress's will. Consequently, we disclaim the existence of any such authority and, to that extent, we expressly abrogate our earlier decisions in Umanzor-Alvarado, Khalil I, Velasquez, and similar cases.
Our analysis derives principally from the statutory scheme. What we view to be the controlling statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1252, makes judicial review of all final orders of removal subject to the provisions of the Administrative Orders Review Act (better known as the Hobbs Act), 28 U.S.C. §§ 2341-2351. A key provision of the Hobbs Act declares that “the court of appeals in its discretion may restrain or suspend, in whole or in part, the operation of the order pending the final hearing and determination of the petition.” Id. § 2349(b). We regard this language as authorizing courts of appeals, in immigration cases, to suspend (that is, to stay) the running of unexpired voluntary departure periods. Accord Rife, 374 F.3d at 615-16; El Himri, 344 F.3d at 1262 (adopting concurring opinion of Berzon, J., in Zazueta-Carrillo, 322 F.3d at 1177).
We do not find any language in the IIRIRA itself that limits our authority to suspend the running of an unexpired voluntary departure period. Although the IIRIRA eliminated our jurisdiction to review the BIA's decisions granting or denying voluntary departure, see 8 U.S.C. §§ 1229c(f), 1252(a)(2)(B)(i), there is a meaningful distinction between reviewing a grant or denial of voluntary departure (which entails testing the order's substantive validity) and suspending the running of a voluntary departure period granted by the agency (which entails staying the operation of the order pending judicial review of the validity of the underlying removal decision). See Lopez-Chavez, 383 F.3d at 652; Rife, 374 F.3d at 615; El Himri, 344 F.3d at 1262.
Given this distinction, we think that if it were Congress's intention to divest the courts of appeals of authority to suspend voluntary departure periods, it would have expressed that intention in a much more direct and pointed fashion. Statutory ambiguities ordinarily are to be construed in favor of the alien in the immigration context. See INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 320, 121 S.Ct. 2271, 150 L.Ed.2d 347 (2001); INS v. Errico, 385 U.S. 214, 225, 87 S.Ct. 473, 17 L.Ed.2d 318 (1966); Fong Haw Tan v. Phelan, 333 U.S. 6, 10, 68 S.Ct. 374, 92 L.Ed. 433 (1948). Having in mind both that maxim and Congress's conspicuous lack of specificity here, we decline the government's invitation to attempt to tease a jurisdiction-stripping meaning out of the oblique language contained in 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(f) and § 1252(a)(2)(B)(1). See Miller v. French, 530 U.S. 327, 340-41, 120 S.Ct. 2246, 147 L.Ed.2d 326 (2000) (warning that courts should be chary about interpreting statutes to restrict the scope of traditional judicial review absent the “clearest command” or an “inescapable inference to the contrary” (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Green, 407 F.3d 434, 442 (1st Cir.2005) (explaining that courts interpreting statutes ordinarily should eschew “linguistic contortion[s] to reach a result that Congress could have accomplished much more simply and straightforwardly”). We conclude, therefore, that the statutory provision relied on by the government cannot override the clear grant of authority contained in 28 U.S.C. § 2349(b).
The government has one last arrow in its quiver. It suggests that because 8 U.S.C. § 1252 limits appellate jurisdiction to review of final orders of removal and because an order allowing a period for voluntary departure is not a final order of removal, we may not suspend the running of a voluntary departure period. This is sheer persiflage. As a formal matter, orders of removal and grants of voluntary departure are entered as alternate orders that comprise different facets of a single ukase. 8 C.F.R. § 1240.26(d). In other words, they are complementary; the BIA may grant a period of voluntary departure, but if the alien overstays the allotted period, that part of the order effectively disintegrates and the removal component takes effect. Taken to its logical extreme, the government's argument would require us to find that we have no jurisdiction to entertain a petition for review unless and until the petitioner has overstayed his voluntary departure deadline because only then is the removal order actually entered against him. We simply do not believe that Congress contemplated such an odd result.
The next problem relates to the need, if any, for exhaustion of administrative remedies. The Seventh Circuit-and only the Seventh Circuit-requires an alien to exhaust administrative remedies (that is, to request an extension of the voluntary departure period from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services District Director) before seeking a judicial stay of voluntary departure. Alimi, 391 F.3d at 893. We reject this gloss.
Even if such a remedy exists, we fear that, in the majority of cases, requiring an alien to seek an administrative extension would be an exercise in futility. By law, the BIA may fashion a voluntary departure period of no more than sixty days. See 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(b)(2). Certain high-level CIS officials are authorized to extend that period, but they too are bound by the sixty-day maximum; they may only extend the voluntary departure period if the BIA granted less than the maximum voluntary departure time in the first instance. See id. § 1229c(b)(2); 8 C.F.R. § 1240.26(f). A sixty-day interval simply is not enough time, in the ordinary course of events, to permit the docketing, briefing, argument, and decision of a petition for judicial review.
We turn now to the substantive standards for evaluating a motion to suspend the running of a previously granted voluntary departure period. Mindful of the weight of authority elsewhere, see, e.g., Rife, 374 F.3d at 616; Desta, 365 F.3d at 748, we conclude that we should subject such a motion to scrutiny under the same legal standards used to assess a motion for stay of removal. Those criteria are spelled out in our opinion in Arevalo v. Ashcroft, 344 F.3d 1 (1st Cir.2003). There, we held that requests for stays of removal should be evaluated under the four-part test applicable to applications for preliminary injunctive relief. Id. at 9. That test requires the alien to show “(1) that she is likely to succeed on the merits of her underlying objection; (2) that she will suffer irreparable harm absent the stay; (3) that this harm outweighs any potential harm fairly attributable to the granting of the stay; and (4) that the stay would not disserve the public interest.” Id. at 7.
At this point, we return to the case at hand. Here, the petitioner did not move to stay the running of the voluntary departure period until well after that period expired. Consequently, we deny his motion.5 Our earlier order staying the order of removal will remain in effect until mandate issues. See Mariscal-Sandoval v. Ashcroft, 370 F.3d 851, 856 (9th Cir.2004). During that interval, the petitioner remains free to depart the United States on his own volition and thereby to avoid some (but not all) of the untoward consequences associated with forced removal. See Khalil II, 370 F.3d at 180.
1. An alien who has departed the United States while under an outstanding order of removal is ineligible for readmission to the United States for a period of either five or ten years, depending on the circumstances, without the Attorney General's consent. 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(9)(A). An alien who departs pursuant to a grant of voluntary departure avoids this disability. Lopez-Chavez v. Ashcroft, 383 F.3d 650, 651 (7th Cir.2004).
2. So too Velasquez v. Ashcroft, 342 F.3d 55, 59 (1st Cir.2003), in which a panel of this court reinstated a voluntary departure period in reliance on Khalil I, but without directly examining either the impact of the IIRIRA or the court's continuing authority to reinstate voluntary departure orders.
3. Congress enacted the IIRIRA on September 30, 1996, to take effect on April 1, 1997. See Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, Pub.L. No. 104-208, § 309, 110 Stat. 3009-546, 3009-625 (1996).
4. We are aware of no case in which either the BIA or CIS has granted such a suspension, and the government has brought none to our attention.
5. If this result seems harsh, we note that we released our opinion in Khalil II on June 3, 2004, well before the BIA decided the petitioner's case. The petitioner plainly was on notice that the issue was in play and easily could have taken precautionary steps to protect his interests.
6. For the sake of clarity, we add that an alien who desires both a stay of removal and a stay of the running of a previously granted voluntary departure period may incorporate both requests in a single motion. The motion, however, must be explicit as to the forms of relief requested and must be timely as to each request.