Opinion ID: 2745716
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: certified in writing by a Service official as

Text: having been received electronically from the State’s record repository or the court’s record repository. A certification under clause (i) may be by means of a computer-generated signature and statement of authenticity. The corresponding regulation uses almost identical language. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.41(c). But failure to “fully comply with the terms of the statute and regulation” does not render electronic conviction records inadmissible. Sinotes-Cruz v. Gonzales, 468 F.3d 1190, 1195–96 (9th Cir. 2006) (admitting copies of criminal convictions that were stamped by an immigration agent and appeared to be official state-court records even though certification by a state official was lacking). As we explained in Sinotes-Cruz, § 1229a(c)(3)(C) instead “establishes the maximum standard for authentication of electronically transmitted records of conviction, but it does not establish a minimum standard.” Id. at 1196. The BIA may therefore admit evidence under either the requirements of the INA statute or through “any procedure that comports with common law rules of evidence.” Id. (quoting Iran v. I.N.S., 656 F.2d 469, 472 n.8 (9th Cir. 1981) (as amended)). 14 PADILLA-MARTINEZ V. HOLDER Admissibility is generally warranted so long as there is “some sort of proof that the document is what it purports to be.” Id. (citation omitted). This makes good sense in the administrative-law context. Here, the BIA found that the unauthenticated document was “what it purport[ed] to be.” Substantial evidence supports the BIA’s finding because the facsimile copy of the transcript appears on its face to be an official reporter’s transcript from the Superior Court of the State of California: the front page of the document contains two stamps, one reading “COPY” and the other reading “FILED May 07 2010 Fresno County Superior Court By _______ Dept. 33 Deputy”; the top margin of each page contains a transmission date reflecting that the document was faxed on May 7, 2010; the last page of the document contains the signed affidavit of the court reporter who directed the transcription of “said proceeding”; and Padilla-Martinez’s counsel was conditionally willing to waive formal certification of the transcript. Even absent authentication from an immigration agent, we hold that this evidence on its face has sufficient indicia of reliability to establish admissibility. Padilla-Martinez also argues that the BIA erred in considering the Hill declaration because the Government only appealed the IJ’s July 7 order terminating immigration proceedings and did not appeal the IJ’s August 5 order denying the Government’s motion to reopen on the basis of the Hill declaration. But because we have held above that the facsimile copy of the transcript is admissible without the Hill declaration, the Government did not need to appeal the motion to reopen. The BIA’s act of construing the Government’s appeal to encompass both the IJ’s July 7 PADILLA-MARTINEZ V. HOLDER 15 decision and the IJ’s August 5 denial of the motion to reopen was harmless. See Quintanilla-Ticas, 783 F.2d at 957. In the notice of appeal, the Government sought BIA review of the IJ’s July 7 legal determination that the facsimile copy of the transcript, without the Hill declaration, was inadmissible. The Government timely filed the relevant appeal on August 6, 2010. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.38(b) (noting that appeals are timely if notice is filed with the BIA within thirty days of the IJ decision). This issue was properly raised and exhausted. See Abebe v. Mukasey, 554 F.3d 1203, 1208 (9th Cir. 2009) (en banc); Figueroa v. Mukasey, 543 F.3d 487, 492–93 (9th Cir. 2008). We next address the third BIA decision.