Opinion ID: 183728
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Mejia reasonably relied on the advice of his fraudulent attorney, thereby equitably tolling the deadline for his motion to reopen under NACARA.

Text: The IJ found, and on de novo review the BIA affirmed, that Mejia's NACARA motion to reopen was legally insufficient, as Mejia married his wife two months later than the NACARA September 11, 1998 deadline for filing. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.43(e)(1). But the IJ and BIA have incorrectly assessed whether that deadline was equitably tolled. See Albillo-De Leon v. Gonzales, 410 F.3d 1090, 1097 (9th Cir.2005) (finding that a NACARA § 203(c) deadline is subject to equitable tolling). This court recognizes equitable tolling of deadlines and numerical limits on motions to reopen or reconsider during periods when a petitioner is prevented from filing because of deception, fraud, or error, as long as the petitioner acts with due diligence in discovering the deception, fraud, or error. Iturribarria v. I.N.S., 321 F.3d 889, 897 (9th Cir.2003). When the issue is fraudulent representation, the limitations period is tolled until the petitioner definitively learns of counsel's fraud. Singh v. Gonzales, 491 F.3d 1090, 1096 (9th Cir.2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). In Singh, the petitioner did not definitively learn of the fraud perpetrated against him when he merely had become suspicious of his lawyer's fraud and family members told him he should get another lawyer. Id. Equitable tolling is applied in situations where, despite all due diligence, the party requesting equitable tolling is unable to obtain vital information bearing on the existence of the claim. Albillo-De Leon, 410 F.3d at 1099-1100 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Albillo-De Leon had good reason to suspect his attorney was perpetrating fraud. Id. at 1094. He later learned that the court had no record of a motion alleged to have been filed on his behalf. He filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and, more than six months after his earlier suspicions, upon receiving the FOIA response, learned his attorney was unlicensed and no motion had been filed on his behalf. Id. This court held that Albillo-De Leon acted with due diligence and did not definitively learn that he was being defrauded until the FOIA results were received. Id. at 1100. The NACARA deadline in question was equitably tolled throughout this period. Id. Mejia hired someone who falsely represented himself as a licensed attorney. Ramos was hired on March 31, 1998, to file a motion to reopen under NACARA § 203(c). Mejia was subsequently informed by the Immigration Court that his motion to reopen, prepared and filed by Ramos, was rejected due to the absence of a filing fee. Ramos assured Mejia that this was a mistake by the court, that he would properly address. Mejia went years seeking and receiving assurances, and continuing to pay Ramos. The BIA viewed Mejia's continued reliance on Ramos as a failure in raising his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, a failure of due diligence, and therefore, found no equitable tolling of the deadline. But additional facts suggest otherwise. Mejia first learned that Ramos was not an attorney through Ramos's secretary, when Ramos refused to accompany Mejia's wife to her long-awaited NACARA appointment. The DHS granted Mejia's wife relief under NACARA on January 7, 2005. Mejia's derivative motion to reopen under NACARA was dependent on the success of his wife being granted relief. It was not unreasonable for Mejia's wife to have relied for so long on Ramos's assistance; her NACARA claim took almost seven years to process but ultimately succeeded. Likewise it was not unreasonable that Mejia, whose claim was derivative to his wife's, would rely similarly on Ramos and expect no action from DHS on his derivative claim until sometime after his wife's claim was settled. Mejia would not have had his claim settled until 2005 even if he had not been fraudulently represented. The long period of waiting by Mejia did not show a lack of due diligence, as proved by his wife's successful result. Other than the long, but ultimately reasonable, length of time, the only apparent clue Mejia may have had that Ramos was defrauding him was the rejection of his motion to reopen for lack of a filing fee in 1998. It was not unreasonable, however, for Mejia to rely on his attorney's subsequent assurances, and believe, not that he was being defrauded, but merely that the DHS had made a mistake. This is not the kind of evidence that would cause a reasonable person to definitively know that he had been defrauded. See Singh, 491 F.3d at 1096. The BIA found that Mejia essentially acknowledged in his July 2005 Sworn Declaration having known already of such problems back in 1998. This statement by the BIA of having known appears to refer to the problem with the filing fee. On this basis, the BIA found that Mejia was not eligible for equitable tolling of the NACARA deadline. But Mejia did not, in his 2005 declaration, essentially acknowledge that he had definitively learned by 1998 that Ramos was fraudulently representing him. Instead, Mejia stated the following about the events of 1998: the motion which Byron Ramos prepared and filed the following month was rejected by the Immigration Court with a letter asking me to pay a $110 filing fee. In response, Byron Ramos assured me that the Court had made a mistake and that he would timely resubmit my motion. Thereafter, on the numerous occasions when I asked Byron Ramos for the status of my case, he continued to assure me that my motion remained properly pending and that the Immigration Court was just waiting until the INS granted my wife's NACARA application to reopen my case. This is not an acknowledgment that Mejia had definitively learned that he was victim of fraud. Nor is it evidence that Mejia was effectively put on notice of fraud and thereafter sat on his claim, failing the test of due diligence. Mejia did what a reasonable person would do in the situation; he relied on his lawyer and assumed that his lawyer was correct in stating that it was the DHS that had made a mistake. He reasonably waited for his wife's claim to be settled before his would be. The BIA's decision against equitable tolling was an abuse of discretion; the NACARA § 203(c) deadline was equitably tolled. Given that, in 2006, an ICE Assistant Chief Counsel conceded that Mejia had established the requisite hardship and met the statutory requirements for NACARA relief, and once equitable tolling is recognized, this case is reduced to the denial of relief based on a fraudulent attorney failing to include a $110 filing fee with Mejia's April 10, 1998 motion to reopen, and then lying about it. Such a result would blindly ignore the Congressional intent inherent in NACARA, and break up a family otherwise entitled to relief. A calculation and application of the period of equitable tolling corrects this result. There are two key steps in the process of Mejia definitively learning of Ramos's fraud. Sometime around January 7, 2005 Mejia was told that Ramos was not a licensed attorney, while also learning that Ramos's efforts had, nonetheless, succeeded in securing relief for his wife. On April 30, 2005, Mejia's present attorney called the Executive Office for Immigration Review's automated system and found no record that any motion to reopen had ever been filed by the fraudulent attorney on Mejia's behalf. In Albillo-De Leon, 410 F.3d at 1099-1100, the court continued to toll the deadline despite petitioner's early suspicions about his attorney and despite being told by a court clerk that there was no record of his motion; it was only after receiving a FOIA response that showed a motion had never been filed and that the attorney was not licensed that the petitioner definitively learned of the fraud. Applying the same rationale, Mejia did not definitively learn that he was subject to fraud until he learned that his attorney was not licensed and was told by the court that no motion on his behalf existed. That was when Mejia finally obtained the vital information bearing on the existence of the claim. Singh, 491 F.3d at 1096. That date is April 30, 2005. The period of equitable tolling began when Mejia first contacted Ramos, March 31, 1998. With an April 30, 2005 end date, the period of tolling was seven years and one month. The NACARA § 203(c) deadline in question was September 11, 1998. 8 C.F.R. 1003.43(e)(1). [3] The deadline then was tolled until October 11, 2005. Before this date, on July 5, 2005, Mejia filed a Motion to Reopen Deportation Proceedings to Rescind an Order of Deportation Entered in Absentia. As part of that motion, Mejia requested adjudication nunc pro tunc of his rejected April 10, 1998 NACARA § 203(c) motion to reopen. Alternatively, he asked that the new motion be adjudicated for such purposes on the basis of equitable tolling. We hold that this motion timely meets the NACARA § 203(c) requirements, making Mejia eligible for NACARA relief.
Mejia received effective notice of his 1997 hearing. Despite Kucana, the BIA reversal of the IJ's sua sponte reopening is not subject to review by this court. We do not disturb these BIA decisions. However, we reverse the BIA decision that Mejia's NACARA application was not subject to equitable tolling and remand for further proceedings consistent with this decision. GRANTED IN PART, DENIED IN PART AND REMANDED, each party to bear its own costs.