Court Opinion

ID: 9607144
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:55:47.755573+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:37.237488
License: Public Domain

RAWLINSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the conclusion that Petitioner Harpal Singh Cheema’s petition for review has been mooted by his deportation. I agree with Judge McKeown that we should refrain from opining about Cheema’s fate in India or the positions taken by the United States government.
Although I also concur that Petitioner Rajwinder Kaur’s petition for review must be granted and this matter remanded, I do so reluctantly. As I detailed in my dissent to the majority opinion in our earlier decision, the unclassified evidence in this case provided adequate support for the denial of relief to Kaur. See Cheema v. Ashcroft, 383 F.3d 848, 860-61 (9th Cir.2004), as amended (Rawlinson J. dissenting). Nevertheless, in view of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ insistence on incorporating classified information into its decision, remand is appropriate as a matter of fundamental fairness. See Saidane v. I.N.S., 129 F.3d 1063, 1065 (9th Cir.1997); see also Ladha v. I.N.S., 215 F.3d 889, 903-04 (9th Cir.2000), as amended (noting that “if the proceeding was so fundamentally unfair that the alien was prevented from reasonably presenting his case, ... we will reverse the BIA’s decision”) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).