Opinion ID: 179022
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The government's duty to produce the A-file

Text: The A-File documents the history of immigrants' and others' interactions with components of the Department of Homeland Security and predecessor agencies. The United States Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) uses the information in an A-File to enforce U.S. immigration laws. [11] The A-file contains all the individual's official record material such as naturalization certificates; various forms (and attachments, e.g., photographs), applications and petitions for benefits under the immigration and nationality laws, reports of investigations; statements; reports; correspondence; and memoranda on each individual for whom INS has created a record under the Immigration and Nationality Act. [12] While Dent was struggling with the issues of his possible naturalization and his mother's citizenship, the government had his A-file with his adoptive mother's petition and his own. He did not have the contents of the file. The government has not suggested that anything in his A-file was or should be secret. The government had a central index linking to Dent's name, both before and after his adoption. [13] That a proceeding should have taken place without the benefit of the documents in the government's file on Dent invited error. The documents show the existence of highly debatable entries. That the parties still disagree about what those documents mean shows the importance of having them where they were most needed, in Dent's proceedings before the IJ. The extensive proceedings about whether he had been adopted, and whether his adoptive mother, evidently born in Kansas in 1905, was an American citizen, were all irrelevant if he was naturalized, and irrelevant if his naturalization was authoritatively and properly denied. [14] In his first appeal (pro se) to the BIA, Dent expressly asked for help getting records relating to his mother's citizenship etc., because he was in jail and his adoptive mother was dead. Despite his request, he was not furnished with copies of his A-file. His lawyer later discovered the documents during his criminal prosecution for illegal reentry. That case was dismissed when the government discovered that it had failed to send his notice of his removal to the correct address. Had the government's error in service not led to Dent's arrest and criminal proceedings, he apparently would never have seen the petitions for his naturalization filed decades before. Dent argues that failure to furnish the A-file to him denied him due process of law, citing our decision in Rendon [15] that denial of a continuance necessary to a fair proceeding denied due process of law. The government argues that Dent did not raise the claim before the BIA, so it is not exhausted. We reject that argument because his document request was indeed addressed to the BIA, and it would not be reasonable to require him to do more, particularly where he was not given the documents and therefore could not have put them before the BIA. The IJ and the government had focused the case, at that point, on whether Dent's Kansan adoptive mother was a United States citizen, a question to which the government may have already had the answer. (The adoption lawyer had suggested in the letter furnished to the BIA, that her 1950 application for a social security number, providing her date and place of birth, should be sufficient to establish her citizenship.) No justification has been offered for the failure to furnish Dent, the IJ, the BIA, and us with the documents in the A-file. The government's motion in separate proceedings to change Dent's A-file number shows the government's awareness of the A-file. The government uses the A-file routinely in almost every case to determine whether an alien should be removed and whether an alien should be naturalized, and maintains an automated system to make access easy for its staff. [16] All the official records, correspondence, photographs, applications, petitions, statements, reports and memoranda relating to immigration contacts between the alien and the government are there, yet in the critical proceedings before the IJ neither the IJ nor the BIA nor Dent was furnished with the relevant documents. We have no idea why not. The only justification the government offers for why we all should have been left rooting around in the dark is in its 28(j) letter, [17] arguing that the law did not require them to furnish the A-file. The government offers no reason why the A-file should not be furnished. An alien has a Fifth Amendment right to due process, including the right to a full and fair hearing in a deportation proceeding. [18] In order to prevail on such a claim, the alien must demonstrate that the challenged proceeding was so fundamentally unfair that the alien was prevented from reasonably presenting his case. [19] Once the alien demonstrates that he was prevented from reasonably presenting his case, he must then show prejudice, which means that the outcome of the proceeding may have been affected by the alleged violation. [20] [W]hen the alien appears pro se, it is the IJ's duty to `fully develop the record.' [21] Because aliens appearing pro se often lack the legal knowledge to navigate their way successfully through the morass of immigration law, and because their failure to do so successfully might result in their expulsion from this country, it is critical that the IJ `scrupulously and conscientiously probe into, inquire of, and explore for all the relevant facts.' [22] Dent argues that because he was not provided with the documents in his A-file, he was denied an opportunity to fully and fairly litigate his removal and his defensive citizenship claim. [23] We agree. Congress has provided that to meet his burden of proof in removal proceedings, the alien shall have access to his entry document and any other records and documents, not considered by the Attorney General to be confidential, pertaining to the alien's admission or presence in the United States. [24] This mandatory access law entitled Dent to his A-file. The government takes the position that the only way Dent would be entitled to get the file would be a Freedom of Information Act request. [25] The government relies on a regulation (not a statute) providing that an individual seeking access to records about himself must submit a written request to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office. [26] The regulation does not purport to address removal hearings specifically. It is a general regulation governing records requests. If it applied to removal proceedings, a serious due process problem would arise, because FOIA requests often take a very long time, continuances in removal hearings are discretionary, and aliens in removal hearings might not get responses to their FOIA requests before they were removed. The doctrine of constitutional avoidance requires us to construe the statute and the regulation, if possible, to avoid a serious constitutional question. [27] We construe the shall have access statute to provide a rule for removal proceedings, and the regulation to apply generally in the absence of such a more specific rule. [28] It would indeed be unconstitutional if the law entitled an alien in removal proceedings to his A-file, but denied him access to it until it was too late to use it. That would unreasonably impute to Congress and the agency a Kafkaesque sense of humor about aliens' rights. Prejudice here is plain, because the A-file, when it is fully examined and this case adjudicated on all the facts, may show that Dent is a naturalized citizen of the United States. We conclude that Dent, having asked for help in getting what records the agency had that bore on his case, should have been given access to his file. The only practical way to give an alien access is to furnish him with a copy. We do not imply that Dent's request for help getting records was a necessary precondition to the government's obligation, nor do we imply that the government would have no obligation if Dent had not asked, because those cases are not before us. We are unable to imagine a good reason for not producing the A-file routinely without a request, but another case may address that issue when facts call for it. The government argues that we ought to defer to the agency interpretation in Matter of Duran [29] for the proposition that the right to access to records is conditioned on following the procedure in the regulations, filing a FOIA request. We need not decide whether to defer to Duran because, first, it addressed discretionary 212(c) relief, not removal, and second, it came down before Congress promulgated the shall have access statute, [30] so Duran did not address the statute. [31]