Opinion ID: 65013
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Effective Exhaustion

Text: Omari asserts that, despite the lack of any explicit mentioning of the present issues to the BIA, he effectively exhausted his claims. He argues that the issues he briefed before and discussed with the IJ and the BIA were sufficient to give the BIA adequate notice that he disputed the grounds of removability. Moreover, Omari contends that some of the issues he now raises overlap with one he did address in his brief to the BIA, namely, the argument that his federal conspiracy conviction was not an aggravated felony. Omari thus suggests that, even if he did not explicitly state his contention with all of the alternative grounds upon which the IJ eventually found him removable, the BIA had sufficient notice ofand opportunities to addressthe issues he now raises. We disagree, and take this opportunity to emphasize that parties must fairly present an issue to the BIA to satisfy § 1252(d)'s exhaustion requirement. Such a requirement has been an implicit necessity of our prior decisions. Though rarely a point of emphasis, our cases on § 1252(d) have continually stated that a petitioner must raise, present, or mention an issue to the BIA to satisfy exhaustion. See, e.g., Toledo-Hernandez, 521 F.3d at 335; Heaven, 473 F.3d at 177; Roy, 389 F.3d at 137; Wang, 260 F.3d at 452-53; Goonsuwan, 252 F.3d at 388. Implicit in these repeated statements is the suggestion that § 1252(d) requires some affirmative action on the part of a party. Such a reading is reinforced by those marginal cases where the sufficiency of raising an issue has been contested. In Carranza-De Salinas v. Gonzales, 477 F.3d 200, 206-07 (5th Cir.2007), for example, we held that a petitioner sufficiently exhausted an issue by presenting it in a less-developed form to the BIA. Similarly, in Burke v. Mukasey, 509 F.3d 695, 696 (5th Cir.2007) (per curiam), we held that a pro se petitioner's general argument to the BIAthat his conviction for possession of stolen property was not an aggravated felonyembraced the slightly more specific question of whether his conviction was a theft offense. And in Hongyok v. Gonzales, 492 F.3d 547, 550 (5th Cir.2007), we held that a semantic difference in the framing of an issue before this court and before the BIA did not raise any significant question of whether the issue was exhausted. In these cases, the petitioners made some concrete statement before the BIA to which they could reasonably tie their claims before this court. Omari, in contrast, has not. His failure to fairly present the issues he now brings on appeal constitutes a failure to exhaust. Such a requirement is not needlessly technical or formalistic. Indeed, requiring the fair presentation of a contested issue is sound policy. First, requiring actual (as opposed to effective) exhaustion allows for efficient adjudication of immigration claims. One of the purposes of § 1252(d)'s exhaustion requirement is to provide the BIA, the agency with the expertise in immigration matters, with the opportunity to address immigration issues in the first instance. See Toledo-Hernandez, 521 F.3d at 334; Zhang v. Ashcroft, 388 F.3d 713, 721 (9th Cir.2004) (per curiam). An essential aspect of this purpose is providing the BIA with adequate notice of those issues it should address. See Figueroa v. Mukasey, 543 F.3d 487, 492 (9th Cir.2008); Zhang, 388 F.3d at 721; Zara v. Ashcroft, 383 F.3d 927, 931 (9th Cir.2004). Accepting Omari's claims of effective exhaustion would shift some of the burden of identifying contested issues from the parties to the BIA. And requiring the BIA to divine from the record all potentially-disputed issues would place a significant burden on the agency. Perhaps wary of leaving any issue unaddressed, the BIA might waste resources combing a petitioner's file and addressing issues that the parties had accepted as lost. The parties are in a better position than the BIA to identify all issues that they contest, and placing the burden of raising those issues on the parties provides an appropriate incentive. Further, the fact that Omari raised some of these issues before the IJ but not the BIA is inadequate to satisfy § 1252(d)'s exhaustion requirement, as is the fact that he ultimately prevailed before the IJ. The IJ determined that Omari was removable as a threshold matter but then granted a discretionary cancellation of removal. We should neither expect nor desire that Omari appeal the IJ's threshold adverse determinations in spite of his ultimate victory. But after the government appealed the case to the BIA, Omari could have addressed these threshold issues in his brief. Omari's ultimate victory before the IJ did not alter the IJ's underlying conclusion that he was removable, and Omari should have realized that he was still subject to removal if the BIA reversed the IJ's discretionary grant of cancellation. We could view this situation through the legal fiction that Omari effectively conceded the correctness of the IJ's conclusions on these issues when he failed to contest them before the BIA. Perhaps more realistically, neither the parties nor the BIA are likely to have thought about addressing these underlying issues of removability. The question thus becomes one of how best to give notice to the BIA that it should address a particular issue. Again, the more efficient way of doing this is placing the onus of raising issues on the parties. Thus, in the interests of efficient adjudication, we refuse to saddle the BIA with the burden of identifying the substance of an immigration appeal. This is not to preclude the BIA from raising issues that the parties have seemingly abandoned, and should the BIA choose to do so, our exhaustion inquiry might be much different. See Lin v. Attorney Gen., 543 F.3d 114, 122-26 (3d Cir.2008) (discussing the circuit split on this issue). But claims that parties have effectively placed the BIA on notice that they contest an issue, even though they never actually stated as much to the BIA, have no place in our § 1252(d) exhaustion analysis. Instead, parties must fairly present their contentions to the BIA to satisfy exhaustion. We note parenthetically that we expressly decline to address the specific question of how extensively a petitioner must raise an issue to satisfy § 1252(d). As much as we would like to provide guidance on this issue, Omari's case does not present sufficient facts that would adequately frame it for decision.