Opinion ID: 204486
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Equitable Tolling of the Ten-Year Continuous-Presence Requirement

Text: 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 upon the earlier of service with a notice to appear or the commission of certain offenses. Id. § 1229b(d)(1). 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 continuous-presence 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). 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 proceedings 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]