Opinion ID: 216098
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Applicability of Issue Preclusion

Text: The government does not contest that the habeas proceeding in district court ended with a final judgment on the merits, nor does it contest that it was a party to that proceeding. The government argues, however, that the issue decided at the pre5950 PAULO v. HOLDER vious proceeding is not identical to the one sought to be relitigated. Specifically, the government argues both that the statutory counterpart question was not raised in the district court, and that the only issue resolved by the district court was that Paulo was entitled to apply for § 212(c) relief in the narrow sense of filing an application. We reject both of these arguments. [3] The government is correct that the question of whether the statutory counterpart rule made Paulo ineligible for § 212(c) relief was not raised in the district court. The government could have made an argument addressed to this question, but it did not. The fact that a particular argument against Paulo’s eligibility was not made by the government and not addressed by the district court does not mean that the issue of Paulo’s eligibility for § 212(c) relief was not decided. See Medina v. INS, 993 F.2d 499, 503 n.15 (5th Cir. 1993). Issue preclusion is designed to “bar[ ] ‘successive litigation of an issue of fact or law actually litigated and resolved in a valid court determination.’ ” Taylor, 553 U.S. at 892 (quoting New Hampshire v. Maine, 532 U.S. 742, 748 (2001)). If a party could avoid issue preclusion by finding some argument it failed to raise in the previous litigation, the bar on successive litigation would be seriously undermined. See 18 James Wm. Moore et al., Moore’s Federal Practice § 132.02[2][c] (3d ed. 2010) (“If a new legal theory or factual assertion raised in the second action is relevant to the issues that were litigated and adjudicated previously, the prior determination of the issue is conclusive on the issue despite the fact that new evidence or argument relevant to the issue was not in fact expressly pleaded, introduced into evidence, or otherwise urged.”). The issue sought to be relitigated in this case is Paulo’s eligibility for § 212(c) relief, which was decided in the previous proceeding by the district court. [4] The government’s argument that the district court’s order entitled Paulo only to file an application for relief, and did not entitle him to have his application evaluated according PAULO v. HOLDER 5951 to the criteria for granting such relief, is also without merit. The district court ordered that the government “shall allow Petitioner to apply to the Attorney General for a discretionary waiver of deportation under former § 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” Although the government allowed Paulo literally to file the papers constituting the application for § 212(c) relief, it then moved for the IJ to pretermit the application. To pretermit generally means to ignore. Black’s Law Dictionary (9th ed. 2009). The word “pretermit” “is used by the immigration court and the Board of Immigration Appeals whenever an alien is found ineligible to apply for some form of relief.” Gonzalez-Balderas v. Holder, 597 F.3d 869, 870 (7th Cir. 2010). [5] It is impossible to read the district court’s order as requiring the government to allow Paulo to file the papers constituting a § 212(c) application, but then allowing the IJ and the BIA to ignore that application. Paulo could have filed a § 212(c) application that would have been pretermitted even before he filed his habeas petition. The district court clearly concluded that Paulo is eligible for § 212(c) relief, and ordered the government to proceed before the immigration courts based on its conclusion that Paulo was eligible. That does not mean that the district court required that Paulo be granted relief. But it does mean that the district court required that his application for § 212(c) relief be considered on the merits. [6] We conclude that the requirements for issue preclusion are satisfied and that, barring an exception to res judicata, the government cannot relitigate Paulo’s eligibility for § 212(c) relief.