Opinion ID: 3048124
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Grounds for Removability

Text: We next consider Alhuay’s claim that the government failed to prove that she had, “by fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact,” procured “a visa, other documentation, or admission into the United States or other benefit,” as required for removal under INA § 212(a)(6)(C)(i), 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i).12 12 We “review[] the IJ’s factual findings and credibility determinations as to whether the [agency] presented clear and convincing evidence of removal under the substantial evidence test.” Bigler v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 451 F.3d 728, 732 (11th Cir. 2006) (citations omitted). The substantial evidence test “requires reversal of factual findings only if the evidence presented 22 After full record review, we conclude that substantial evidence supports the IJ and BIA’s findings that Alhuay procured a benefit—her adjustment of status as a self-petitioning spouse—through fraud or willful misrepresentation. First, Alhuay’s 1975 marriage certificate to Carlos Saldana shows that she was married before coming to the United States. Her divorce from Saldana was not finalized until 2005. Alhuay thus was not divorced from Saldana at the time she married Quesnay in 1993 or when she remarried Quesnay in 1997. At her June 26, 2008 hearing, Alhuay admitted that she was not officially divorced from Saldana at the time she married Quesnay in 1993. As a result, Alhuay was not legally married to Quesnay in 1995, when she filed for—and in 1996 received—special immigrant status as a self-petitioning “spouse” of an abusive Quesnay. Nor was Alhuay legally married to Quesnay in December 1997, when her status was adjusted to lawful permanent resident based on her approved self-petition. At a minimum, she concealed certain material facts, including that she had married Saldana and had not divorced him. Indeed, she compels a contrary conclusion.” Id.; see Adefemi v. Ashcroft, 386 F.3d 1022, 1027 (11th Cir. 2004) (en banc). This test is “highly deferential.” Al Najjar v. Ashcroft, 257 F.3d 1262, 1284 (11th Cir. 2001). In addition, “[w]e review only the [BIA’s] decision, except to the extent that it expressly adopts the IJ’s opinion.” Id. 23 concealed the Saldana marriage altogether. Second, substantial evidence supports the IJ’s express findings that Alhuay was not credible. For example, at the April 13, 2009 hearing, Alhuay claimed that she believed she had divorced Carlos Saldana before she arrived in the United States in 1990 and before her marriages in 1992 to José Diaz and then in 1993 to Abel Quesnay. As the IJ noted, the documentary record, among other things, refutes Alhuay’s claim. In her 1993 Nevada application for a license to marry Quesnay, Alhuay stated that she was married only once before and that her first marriage ended in divorce in February 1993 (which is not before, but three years after she came to the United States, in 1990).13 In any event, in her first Biographic Information form, also filed in 1993, Alhuay claimed that she was “NEVER MARRIED BEFORE” she married Quesnay. In fact, at the time Alhuay completed these two forms, she had been married twice before—first to Saldana in 1975 and then to Diaz in 1992. Furthermore, in her second application for a license to marry Quesnay, completed in 1997, Alhuay falsely claimed that she had only one prior marriage and that it had ended in divorce. In fact, at that time Alhuay already had been married three times. 13 Alhuay admits that this is her divorce from Diaz in February 1993. 24 We recognize that Alhuay testified that her 1993 Biographic Information form stated that she was “NEVER MARRIED BEFORE” because she and Quesnay, who filled out the form together, believed the question pertained to only his prior marriages. However, one year later, at the April 13, 2009 hearing, Alhuay testified that the discrepancy on this form was due to her belief that the form did not require her to report her foreign marriages (Saldana) or marriages of short duration (Diaz). In any event, the form instructs the applicant to list “former husbands or wives” and does not state that certain marriages are exempt from reporting.14 Alhuay’s inconsistent testimony regarding her criminal history and her travels to Peru further supports the IJ’s findings that Alhuay was not credible. Alhuay initially testified that she was arrested twice since she entered the United States, but later she admitted that she was arrested four times. Alhuay testified that she had never returned to Peru since coming to the United States, but upon further questioning, she testified that she had been back six times since 1990. 14 Alhuay’s 1997 Biographic Information does not cure her prior fraud or misrepresentations. On that form, Alhuay reported her prior marriages to Saldana, Diaz, and Quesnay. But it also reported her purported divorce from Saldana, which did not occur until 2005. In any event, Alhuay’s application for permanent-resident status in 1997 was based on her self-petition, approved in 1996, which was obtained through fraud or willful misrepresentation. 25 In the final analysis, the above record does not compel the conclusion that Alhuay did not procure her special immigration status (as the battered spouse of Quesnay) by fraud or by willfully misrepresenting a material fact, her marital status, in her self-petition. See Adefemi, 386 F.3d at 1027. Accordingly, substantial evidence supports the IJ’s and the BIA’s finding that Alhuay is removable under INA § 212(a)(6)(C)(i), 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i).