Opinion ID: 1043396
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Regulatory violation

Text: Gomez also argues that his deportation was invalid because the IJ violated 8 C.F.R. § 1003.25(b) by finding that Gomez’s waiver of rights was “voluntary, knowing, and intelligent” without a sufficient factual record.6 Again, our 6 8 C.F.R. § 1003.25(b) provides in full: An Immigration Judge may enter an order of deportation, exclusion or removal stipulated to by the alien (or the alien’s representative) and the Service. The Immigration Judge may enter such an order without a hearing and in the absence of the parties based on a review of the charging document, the written stipulation, and supporting documents, if any. If the alien is unrepresented, the Immigration Judge must determine that the alien’s waiver is voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. The stipulated request and required waivers shall be signed on behalf of the government and by the alien and his or her attorney or representative, if any. The attorney or representative shall file a Notice of Appearance in accordance with § 1003.16(b). A stipulated order shall constitute a conclusive determination of the alien’s deportability or removability from the United States. The stipulation shall include: (1) An admission that all factual allegations contained in the charging document are true and correct as written; (2) A concession of deportability or inadmissibility as charged; (3) A statement that the alien makes no application for relief under the Act; UNITED STATES V. GOMEZ 21 reasoning in Ramos is directly on point and does not rely on the concern of incompetent translation. Independent of the invalid waiver issue, we found that Ramos’s Stipulated Removal form provided an inadequate basis on which the IJ could rely to evaluate the validity of Ramos’s waiver of rights. “Without any independent inquiry of the petitioner, and depending solely on information provided by DHS, the IJ concluded that Ramos had ‘voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently’ waived his due process rights.” Ramos, 623 F.3d at 683. Despite the form’s explicit waiver language, we concluded that the IJ’s finding “violated 8 C.F.R. § 1003.25(b) by failing to determine whether [Ramos’s] waiver was ‘voluntary, knowing, and intelligent,’ as required by the regulation.” Id. We concluded that the regulatory violation would have been sufficient to invalidate Ramos’s underlying removal but for a lack of prejudice. See id. at 683–84. (4) A designation of a country for deportation or removal under section 241(b)(2)(A)(i) of the Act; (5) A concession to the introduction of the written stipulation of the alien as an exhibit to the Record of Proceeding; (6) A statement that the alien understands the consequences of the stipulated request and that the alien enters the request voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently; (7) A statement that the alien will accept a written order for his or her deportation, exclusion or removal as a final disposition of the proceedings; and (8) A waiver of appeal of the written order of deportation or removal. 22 UNITED STATES V. GOMEZ Here, on January 19, 2006, Gomez signed the revised Notice to Appear requesting a prompt hearing before an IJ. On the same day, he signed the Stipulated Removal form waiving, inter alia, the right to a hearing before an IJ. Without a hearing, and only on the basis of Gomez’s signed Stipulated Removal form, the IJ found Gomez’s “waiver to be voluntary, knowing, and intelligent.” The IJ then found, “upon review of the charging document and the written stipulation that he is removable based upon clear and convincing evidence in the form of his own admissions” and ordered him removed.7 We do not read Ramos to require an actual appearance by every alien before an IJ, a possibility that the district court considered here. Rather, as the district court also discussed, 8 C.F.R. § 1003.25(b) can be read to contain two disjunctive provisions: [1] An Immigration Judge may enter an order of deportation, exclusion or removal stipulated to by the alien (or the alien’s representative) and the Service. The Immigration Judge may enter such an order without a hearing and in the absence of the parties based on a review of the charging document, the written stipulation, and supporting documents, if any. [Or,] [2] [i]f the alien is unrepresented, the Immigration Judge must determine that the 7 We are left to assume that the stipulation was signed subsequent to the demand for a prompt hearing (which appears on the NTA) and that the IJ inferred that the stipulation was controlling. UNITED STATES V. GOMEZ 23 alien’s waiver is voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.25(b). In other words, we could read the second provision to rebut the first: where an alien is unrepresented, the IJ’s duty to determine the waiver’s validity supercedes the IJ’s ability to do so without a hearing. However, we need not decide that issue. Rather, as Gomez points out, there are several other avenues that immigration officials could pursue to create a sufficient factual record without conducting a hearing. For example, the government could provide a written declaration by the immigration officer of the circumstances surrounding the alien’s waiver, stating that avenues of relief were discussed and that the officer provided a competently translated, individualized explanation of the rights the alien waived.8 Here, we conclude that the procedures followed in removing Gomez violated 8 C.F.R. § 1003.25(b) because the IJ could not have found that Gomez’s waiver was “voluntary, knowing, and intelligent” based on the evidence before him, and thus violated 8 C.F.R. § 1003.25(b). See Ramos, 623 F.3d at 683. Therefore, on the basis of both his invalid waiver of the right to appeal the deportation order and the IJ’s regulatory violation, Gomez has met the requirements of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d)(1)–(2) to attack collaterally the validity of his 2006 8 We do not purport to set forth an exhaustive list of what would be necessary or sufficient to comply with this requirement in every case. The gravamen of our holding is that an IJ must have before him a sufficient record on which to determine that an alien’s waiver of rights is “voluntary, knowing, and intelligent.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.25(b). 24 UNITED STATES V. GOMEZ deportation. We next turn to whether Gomez was prejudiced by these violations.