Opinion ID: 654589
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Remanding the Case for a Sec. 1182(c) Hearing.

Text: 23 Bedoya-Valencia next contends that this court should decline to address the merits of his claim at this time and remand the case for a determination of whether he would be granted Sec. 1182(c) discretionary relief on his drug offense ground for deportation, thus avoiding the constitutional issue presented by this appeal in the event of an adverse discretionary ruling on remand by the BIA. He cites Gutierrez v. INS, 745 F.2d 548 (9th Cir.1984), in support of this procedure. In Gutierrez, as here, the alien was charged with both entry without inspection and a narcotics offense. Unlike the present case, however, the immigration judge in Gutierrez had ruled that the alien should not be accorded discretionary relief on the narcotics ground, in addition to ruling that discretion could not be exercised with respect to the entry without inspection. See id. at 549. On appeal, the BIA considered only the latter ruling. The Ninth Circuit remanded for the BIA to address the immigration judge's ruling on the narcotics issue, an independent determination which, if it had been affirmed, would have disposed of the case. Id. 24 In this case, the IJ and the BIA properly refrained from exercising their Sec. 1182(c) discretion regarding Bedoya-Valencia's narcotics conviction. They were obliged to follow the Attorney General's ruling in Hernandez-Casillas. See Campos, 961 F.2d at 314 (The Attorney General's ruling in [Hernandez-Casillas ] was administratively dispositive.). Because, pursuant to Hernandez-Casillas, no Sec. 1182(c) discretion was available with respect to Bedoya-Valencia's entry without inspection, it would have been an exercise in futility for the IJ and the BIA to address the waiveability of the alternative ground of deportation. A remand for that purpose without addressing the underlying issue would be equally unproductive. 25