Opinion ID: 4533799
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Agency’s Jurisdiction

Text: In Pereira v. Sessions, the Supreme Court held that the Immigration and Nationality Act requires a notice to appear to include a hearing time and place to trigger the “stop-time rule,” 138 S. Ct. 2105, 2113–20 (2018), which cuts off an alien’s accrual of physical presence or residence for the purposes of qualifying for cancellation of removal, see 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(a), (b), (d)(1). Kohn did not apply for cancellation of removal, and the stop-time 2 rule had no bearing on this case; nevertheless, Kohn argues that Pereira requires us to conclude that his notice to appear was insufficient to vest the immigration court with jurisdiction over his removal proceedings because it did not specify the time and place of his hearing. In Banegas Gomez v. Barr, we rejected that argument, holding that Pereira addresses a narrow question regarding the stop-time rule and does not “void jurisdiction in cases in which an NTA omits a hearing time or place.” 922 F.3d 101, 110 (2d Cir. 2019). We noted that the regulation vesting jurisdiction does not require a notice to appear to specify the time and date of the initial hearing “so long as a notice of hearing specifying this information is later sent to the alien.” Id. at 112 (quotation marks omitted). Kohn argues that Kisor v. Wilkie, 139 S. Ct. 2400 (2019), casts doubt on Banegas Gomez because it holds that courts should only give Auer deference to an agency’s interpretation after they have exhausted all other tools of construction. But Banegas Gomez was not based on Auer deference to the BIA’s interpretation; rather, we decided the case on the plain language of the statute and regulations, while noting that our conclusion was “reinforced by the BIA’s precedential opinion.” 922 F.3d at 111. Accordingly, Kisor does not affect our holding in Banegas Gomez. Because the IJ had jurisdiction over Kohn’s removal proceedings, we turn to the merits of his other arguments. 3