Opinion ID: 787211
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Trouble with Stale Administrative Records

Text: 58 It is a salutary principle of administrative law review that the reviewing court act upon a closed record. This modus procedendi secures to an administrative agency the necessary measure of authority and discretion within its sphere of special competence, by preventing undue interference by generalist courts that are charged only with ensuring procedural regularity in the agency's actions. This in turn translates to long-term stability and predictability in outcomes in matters within the agency's expertise. While the principle yields good results in most cases, in the area of asylum law, where claims are heavily dependent on country conditions, it can become an albatross. More specifically, the dispute often centers on the government's assertion, based upon a State Department Country Report, that conditions have so changed from those represented in the asylum application that there is no longer a basis for the alien's claim of persecution in the country of proposed removal. 59 It has become common that those country reports in the administrative record are three or four years old by the time the petition for review comes before us, and they frequently do not fairly reflect what our knowledge of world events suggests is the true state of affairs in the proposed country of removal, or the region embracing it. It almost goes without saying that, in the troubled areas of the planet from which asylum claims tend to come, the pace of change is rapid-oppressive regimes rise and fall, and conditions improve and worsen for vulnerable ethnic, religious, and political minorities. As a consequence, we become like astronomers whose telescopes capture light rays that have taken millions of years to traverse the cosmos, revealing things as they once were, but are no longer. But unlike astronomers, who can only speculate about what is happening at this moment in a far-off galaxy, we often know very well what has happened in the years since an administrative record was compiled. 60 As we have suggested above, the process-based review of agency actions is, in theory at least, just that-process-based, without regard to the merits. That should make it easier, not harder, to judge long-cold records. However, in contrast to the traditional administrative law case, this type of review can give rise to potentially devastating consequences to an applicant who faces the possibility of persecution (or worse) if he is removed. 61 This case is a good example of how much can change in the time between the creation of the administrative record before the IJ and the judgment of this Court. On the one hand, Slobodan Milosevic is now gone from the region, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia no longer exists, and Berishaj's native Montenegro is now within the recently formed loose federation of Serbia and Montenegro. On the other hand, Berishaj claims-at least as of his testimony in early 2001-that the leaders in power are in practice mirror image[s] of Milosevic. Four-year-old country reports are singularly unenlightening when faced with this kind of situation. 62 Specific to Berishaj's fear of persecution-we are looking now to the State Department's 2003 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Serbia and Montenegro, released in February 2004, which we have downloaded from the State Department's web site (the 2003 Country Report)-we note that police occasionally beat suspects during arrest and detention, but there has been generally improved respect by the police for human rights. Recently enacted criminal procedure reforms are aimed toward eliminating arbitrary arrest and detention, and the Montenegrin Helsinki Committee (HCM), a recognized human-rights monitor, did not record any incidents of arbitrary arrest or detention during 2003. In the cases where arrest did not lead to prosecution, the HCM did not find (in contrast to previous years) any political, ethnic, or religious motivation by the police. Ethnic Albanians participate in the political process, and though they are proportionately underrepresented, they do have seats in the Montenegrin Parliament. Finally, with respect to Berishaj's troubles at the illegal university in Kosovo, the State Department notes that the government in Kosovo did not restrict access to the Internet or academic freedom. But this 2003 Country Report is not part of the administrative record. 63 There are some applicants to whom our concerns simply do not apply-applicants from countries where conditions have not changed significantly for the better or worse in many years. And in other countries, the flux of world events is too great to hope for perfect, up-to-date decisions in every immigration case. Surely, however, we can do much better than we are doing now, especially in cases from volatile countries and with exceptionally stale records. The precise problem is not just that the administrative records in so many cases are out-of-date (though that is a contributing factor), but concomitantly that we do not have a reasonably recent final agency determination to review. It is one thing to supplement the record before us; it is quite another to decide a case based on this expanded record. 64 We are aware that the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit apparently takes judicial notice of post-final-agency-determination developments, in the form of new country reports, and at times rests its disposition on those developments. See, e.g., Pelinkovic v. Ashcroft, 366 F.3d 532, 540-41 (7th Cir.2004) (taking judicial notice that country conditions for ethnic Albanians in Serbia and Montenegro in 2004 are much-improved over conditions in the early 1990s). This practice might go a long way toward solving the problem we face, but with all respect we are unable to square this practice with the clear command from SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 63 S.Ct. 454, 87 L.Ed. 626 (1943), that courts reviewing the determination of an administrative agency must approve or reject the agency's action purely on the basis of the reasons offered by, and the record compiled before, the agency itself. Moreover, we are not especially sanguine about the Seventh Circuit's relaxed approach to agency review. It not only carries with it the potential for wholesale relitigation of many immigration-law claims, but the Courts of Appeals are ill-equipped to receive supplementary evidence. At all events, the asylum claimant should have the opportunity to challenge the updated country report that the government would rely on. 65 Congress could, of course, modify the rules normally applicable to petitions for review of a final decision of the BIA without scrapping the strictures of administrative agency review altogether. Congress could require the Courts of Appeals, in their sound discretion, on motion or sua sponte, to grant petitions for review of the BIA, and remand when it appears from judicially noticeable materials that the record compiled before the agency does not generally reflect contemporary country conditions. 66 Better yet, the parties to these proceedings might take advantage of the procedures in 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(c)(6) (permitting aliens to move to reopen proceedings on the basis of new facts) and 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2 (permitting an alien or the government to move the BIA to reopen proceedings, and authorizing the BIA to do so sua sponte ). Indeed, both the statute and regulation seem to explicitly contemplate the situation we comment on here; they permit reopening of asylum proceedings based on changed country conditions arising in the country of nationality or the country to which removal has been ordered. 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(c)(6)(C)(ii); see also 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c)(3)(ii) (permitting reopening based on changed circumstances arising in the country of nationality or in the country to which deportation has been ordered). Counsel for aliens generally seem to be zealous in pursuing these motions to reopen when appropriate. But if this panel had to characterize the posture of petitions before it for review of the BIA on an outdated record, we would say that in the majority, country conditions had improved, weakening the alien's case for relief. Accordingly, we encourage the Department of Justice to adopt a policy that encourages its attorneys to file motions to reopen when the adjudication of an applicant's claim would benefit from an updated administrative record. The device of the motion to reopen is far from perfect, though, as it may additionally delay an already protracted process. 67 We come at last to the one actor not directly discussed so far: the BIA. The trigger for the recent spate of out-of-date records is, we suspect, the streamlining regulations noted above, which permit the BIA to summarily affirm an IJ's decision without issuing its own opinion. See 8 C.F.R. § 3.1(e)(4). The natural-though surely unintended-consequence of the streamlining regulations is summary affirmance by the BIA of stale, backlogged decisions by IJs. When it does so, the BIA may have shirked its role and duty of ensuring that the final agency determination in an immigration case is reasonably sound and reasonably current. The decision here on review is neither, and it is an embarrassment to the Agency on multiple levels. The reasoning of the IJ is open to ridicule, as we think our discussion in Part III.A illustrates; and the administrative record is a hoary relic: For example, the most recent country report was thirty-five months out-of-date at the time the BIA rendered its decision, and as of this writing, is fifty-four months out-of-date. 5 Though the en banc Court in Dia approved the streamlining regulations over a statutory and Constitutional challenge, it does not follow that the regulations are not subject to misuse and even abuse. 68 Setting aside our perplexity at how the BIA apparently thought the IJ's opinion worthy of being the final agency determination, we do not understand why the BIA did not intervene to supplement the record in a weak case, arising out of a highly volatile and evolving region of the world. The streamlining regulations exist to save an overburdened BIA from unnecessary and redundant tasks. They are not a license for the BIA to say not our problem. Outdated administrative records are the BIA's problem, at least as things now stand, and the BIA needs to confront them. We therefore call on the BIA to adopt-by opinion, regulation, or otherwise-policies that will avoid the Court of Appeals having to review administrative records so out-of-date as to verge on meaningless. 69 In view of this discussion, we direct the Clerk of the Court to send a copy of this opinion, calling particular attention to this Part III.B, to the Chair, Ranking Member, Chief Majority Counsel, and Minority Counsel of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and the Chair and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship; to the Chair, Ranking Member, Chief Majority Counsel, and Minority Counsel of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and the Chair and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims; to the Attorney General of the United States, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, and the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Immigration Litigation; to the Secretary of Homeland Security and the General Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security; and to the Chair of the Board of Immigration Appeals. 70