Opinion ID: 4534282
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The IJ Regulation: 1997–Present

Text: 10 We cite the 1997 version of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which includes amendments made in 1996, before Congress enacted the 1996 Act. See About the Code of Federal Regulations, Nat’l Archives, https://www.archives .gov/federal-register/cfr/about.html (last updated Aug. 8, 2018). 11 The regulations’ location in the CFR was moved after DHS was created in 2002. Zhang, 617 F.3d at 658 n.6 (discussing Aliens and Nationality; Homeland Security; Reorganization of Regulations, 68 Fed. Reg. 9824 (Feb. 28, 2003)). 14 The outcome of this appeal turns on the text of one of the regulations first adopted in 1997: (b) Before the Immigration Court— (1) In general. An Immigration Judge may upon his or her own motion at any time, or upon motion of the Service or the alien, reopen or reconsider any case in which he or she has made a decision, unless jurisdiction is vested with the Board of Immigration Appeals. . . . [A] party may file only . . . one motion to reopen proceedings . . . within 90 days of the date of entry of a final administrative order of removal, deportation, or exclusion . . . . A motion to reopen . . . shall not be made by or on behalf of a person who is the subject of removal, deportation, or exclusion proceedings subsequent to his or her departure from the United States. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.23(b)(1) (2019). 12 In this appeal, the government argues that this regulation is genuinely ambiguous and that we must defer if the agency’s interpretation is reasonable. Brief for Respondent at 14 (mistakenly asking for Chevron deference, not Auer deference). It pins the regulation’s asserted ambiguity on what the agency perceives is a conflict between the specific post-departure-bar provision and the provision giving IJs general sua sponte authority to reopen removal proceedings “at any time.” 13 Id. at 15. But as explained below, we rule that these two provisions do not conflict but instead 12 The corresponding provisions governing the Board, 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(a), (d), are not at issue in this appeal. Section 1003.2(a) grants the Board sua sponte authority in “any case in which it has rendered a decision,” something the Board had not done in Reyes-Vargas’s case. 13 In In re Armendarez-Mendez, 24 I. & N. Dec. 646, 660 (B.I.A. 2008), a published, precedential Board decision, the Board held that the post-departure bar limits the IJ and Board’s authority to sua sponte reopen. 15 apply within their own realms. And without a conflict, we find no ambiguity and cannot defer to the Board’s interpretation.