Opinion ID: 3048124
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: June 2008 Hearing

Text: A subsequent removal hearing was held on June 26, 2008. At that hearing, Alhuay’s lawyer, James McTyier, requested an interpreter. The IJ responded that an interpreter was not immediately available, but he would try to locate one. The hearing proceeded, and before Alhuay was sworn in, the IJ emphasized that if Alhuay did not understand a question, she should tell him. Alhuay responded that she understood the IJ’s instructions. Before the interpreter arrived, Alhuay testified that she received permanentresident status as the battered spouse of Quesnay, and that when she married Quesnay, she thought she was divorced from Saldana. Alhuay admitted that when she married Quesnay, she was not officially divorced from Saldana. Alhuay stated that she and Saldana had gone to her family lawyer in Peru and signed the papers but that the lawyer never finished the paperwork. After the interpreter arrived, Alhuay admitted that, at her 1997 interview for 6 permanent-resident status, she told the interviewer that she was divorced from Saldana. However, she discovered that her attorney had not completed the Saldana divorce only after immigration authorities asked her to provide the Saldana divorce decree. Alhuay also submitted an affidavit from Saldana, in which he verified that he and Alhuay went to an attorney in Peru to process their divorce but learned years later that the divorce had not been finalized. When the IJ asked Alhuay about her representation on her 1993 Biographic Information form that she was never married, Alhuay replied that Quesnay completed the form for her, and they thought the blank for “FORMER HUSBANDS AND WIVES” referred to Quesnay’s spouses, not Alhuay’s. Although Alhuay admitted that she signed the form, she testified that Quesnay wrote the answers and that she did not look at the answers because she trusted him. The IJ discussed Alhuay’s 1993 application for her first Nevada license to marry Quesnay. The IJ noted that this 1993 license application would either support her contention that she thought she was divorced from Saldana or contain misrepresentations. The IJ thought the government had already met its burden at that point but continued the hearing to allow Alhuay to obtain the 1993 marriage license application.