Court Opinion

ID: 9412054
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-28 19:01:18.962665+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:41:25.490440
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 21-13382    Document: 54-1      Date Filed: 07/28/2023    Page: 1 of 20

                                                                [PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 21-13382
                           ____________________

        FRANCO P. CLEMENT,
                                                                Petitioner,
        versus
        U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL,

                                                               Respondent.

                           ____________________

                    Petition for Review of a Decision of the
                         Board of Immigration Appeals
                           Agency No. A040-379-929
                           ____________________
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        2                      Opinion of the Court                21-13382

        Before ROSENBAUM, BRANCH, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.
        BRASHER, Circuit Judge:
               This appeal comes to us on a petition for review of the Board
        of Immigration Appeals. During removal proceedings, Franco
        Clement wrote to the Board of Immigration Appeals asking to
        withdraw his appeal of an immigration judge’s decision and to be
        deported. The Board granted his withdrawal request. He now as-
        serts that the federal laws governing derivative citizenship are un-
        constitutional and seeks a declaration that he is a U.S. citizen as a
        judicial remedy. We conclude that Clement forfeited judicial re-
        view of this claim when he deliberately withdrew his appeal to the
        Board and asked to be deported. Accordingly, we deny his petition
        for review.
                                       I.

               Franco Clement was born in Liberia in 1971 to parents who
        never married. Shortly after his birth, his father obtained a decree
        of legitimation from a Liberian court. Then in 1979, Clement’s fa-
        ther naturalized to U.S. citizenship. Clement’s mother later also
        naturalized to U.S. citizenship—after Clement’s eighteenth birth-
        day. And in 1986, when Clement was a teenager, he began to reside
        in the United States as a lawful permanent resident.
               After his admission to the United States, Clement was con-
        victed of four criminal offenses relevant to the removal proceed-
        ings against him: two offenses under New Jersey law for possessing
        a controlled substance with intent to distribute it, one offense
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        21-13382               Opinion of the Court                         3

        under North Carolina law for possessing a controlled substance
        with intent to sell or deliver it, and one federal mail fraud offense.
        Because of these convictions, the Department of Homeland Secu-
        rity initiated removal proceedings against Clement in 2020.
               Before an immigration judge in the Department of Justice,
        DHS alleged that Clement is a citizen of Liberia and not a U.S. cit-
        izen. In response, Clement asserted U.S. citizenship based on his
        parents’ citizenship and moved to terminate the removal proceed-
        ings against him. The law that applies to a claim of derivative citi-
        zenship is “the law in effect when the last material condition [for
        obtaining derivative citizenship] was met.” Levy v. U.S. Att’y Gen.,
        882 F.3d 1364, 1366 n.1 (11th Cir. 2018). And so, Clement’s asser-
        tion of citizenship turned on an application of the now-repealed 8
        U.S.C. § 1432(a).
                When Clement began residing in the United States in 1986,
        former Section 1432(a) provided three paths to citizenship for “[a]
        child born outside of the United States” to noncitizen parents. First,
        a child may become a citizen if both parents naturalize before the
        child turns eighteen and the child lawfully and permanently resides
        in the United States “at the time of the naturalization of the parent
        last naturalized.” 8 U.S.C. § 1432(a)(1), (4)-(5). Second, a child may
        become a citizen if one parent has died and the surviving parent
        naturalizes before the child turns eighteen and while the child law-
        fully and permanently resides in the United States. Id. § 1432(a)(2),
        (4)-(5). Third, a child may become a citizen upon “[t]he naturaliza-
        tion of the parent having legal custody of the child when there has
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        4                      Opinion of the Court                 21-13382

        been a legal separation of the parents or the naturalization of the
        mother if the child was born out of wedlock and the paternity of
        the child has not been established by legitimation.” Id. § 1432(a)(3).
        As with the first two paths to citizenship, the parent’s naturaliza-
        tion must occur before the child turns eighteen and while the child
        lawfully and permanently resides in the United States. Id.
        § 1432(a)(4)-(5).
               After finding that Clement’s paternity was never formally le-
        gitimated by a Liberian court, the immigration judge determined
        that Clement did not derive citizenship from his parents under the
        third path that Section 1432(a) provides because he was born out
        of wedlock and his mother did not naturalize before his eighteenth
        birthday. Having concluded that Clement was not a citizen, the im-
        migration judge issued an order in June 2020 ruling that Clement
        was subject to removal. Clement waived his appeal of the decision
        to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
                In April 2021, however, Clement submitted new evidence to
        the immigration court regarding his citizenship claim (including a
        decree of legitimation from a Liberian probate court), which an im-
        migration judge construed as a motion to reopen and terminate
        proceedings. In an order issued on April 30, 2021, the immigration
        judge denied Clement’s motion to reopen as untimely, concluding
        that Clement did not establish equitable tolling of the ninety-day
        filing deadline. The immigration judge’s April 30, 2021, order also
        ruled that sua sponte reopening of removal proceedings under 8
        C.F.R. § 1003.23(b)(1) was not warranted given the continued
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        21-13382               Opinion of the Court                         5

        failure of Clement’s citizenship claim. The immigration judge con-
        ceded that Clement’s new evidence proved that his paternity was,
        in fact, legitimated by a Liberian court, contrary to the previous
        finding. But the immigration judge determined that Clement’s cit-
        izenship claim still failed because Section 1432(a), as written, would
        allow Clement to derive citizenship from his parents only if his
        both his parents had naturalized before his eighteenth birthday,
        and his mother had not.
               Clement then appealed the immigration judge’s April 30,
        2021, order but ultimately withdrew his appeal by filing a handwrit-
        ten and signed “motion to withdraw appeal” with the Board stating
        his desire to withdraw his appeal. The motion said: “I will [sic] like
        to withdraw Appeal to the B.I.A. And give up and be deported. I do
        not want to be in detention Anymore.” The “motion to withdraw
        appeal” is dated July 5, 2021. On August 31, 2021, the Board issued
        an order granting Clement’s motion to withdraw his appeal.
               Clement filed a petition for review in this Court on Septem-
        ber 30, 2021, thirty days after the Board’s order granting his motion
        to withdraw his appeal.
                                       II.

               We review our subject matter jurisdiction over a petition for
        review de novo. Lin v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 677 F.3d 1043, 1045 (11th Cir.
        2012).
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                 21-13382

                                       III.

               In the petition for review before us, Clement asserts that for-
        mer 8 U.S.C. § 1432 unconstitutionally discriminates based on race
        and gender in a way that precludes him from deriving his father’s
        U.S. citizenship. Before we may entertain the merits of Clement’s
        arguments, we must determine the extent of our jurisdiction over
        Clement’s petition for review. See Madu v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 470 F.3d
        1362, 1365 (11th Cir. 2006). We conclude that we have jurisdiction
        to review whether the Board erroneously withdrew Clement’s ap-
        peal, but we cannot reach his constitutional arguments because he
        withdrew his appeal to the Board and asked to be deported.
               We divide our discussion into two parts. First, we establish
        that we may review whether the Board properly deemed an appeal
        withdrawn when a petition for review follows from a withdrawal
        order. Second, we conclude that we cannot review Clement’s sub-
        stantive arguments because he does not challenge the Board’s de-
        cision to deem his appeal withdrawn and he abandoned his claims
        by withdrawing his appeal and asking to be deported.
                                       A.

               Clement’s petition for review comes to us following a Board
        of Immigration Appeals order deeming his appeal to the Board vol-
        untarily withdrawn. Section 242 of the Immigration and National-
        ity Act, codified as 8 U.S.C. § 1252, governs our jurisdiction over
        removal proceedings. Section 1252(a)(1) grants jurisdiction to
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        21-13382               Opinion of the Court                          7

        review “final order[s] of removal.” Mata v. Lynch, 576 U.S. 143, 147
        (2015) (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(1)).
               The Attorney General argues that the Board’s withdrawal
        order is not a “final order of removal” over which we have jurisdic-
        tion under Section 1252(a)(1). Clement argues that we have juris-
        diction and goes one step further; he argues that we can consider
        the merits of his appeal to the Board, even if the Board correctly
        declared his appeal withdrawn. We conclude that neither party is
        correct. We have jurisdiction under Section 1252 to determine
        whether the Board correctly deemed Clement’s appeal withdrawn,
        but we cannot review the merits of the withdrawn appeal itself.
               We have not previously decided whether an order granting
        a motion to withdraw an appeal to the Board is a final order of re-
        moval. But several of our sister circuits have concluded that an or-
        der deeming an appeal withdrawn is a final order of removal. E.g.,
        Madrigal v. Holder, 572 F.3d 239, 242 (6th Cir. 2009); Lopez-Angel v.
        Barr, 952 F.3d 1045, 1047 (9th Cir. 2020); Montano-Vega v. Holder,
        721 F.3d 1175, 1177-78 (10th Cir. 2013); see also Long v. Gonzales, 420
        F.3d 516, 519-21 (5th Cir. 2005) (exercising jurisdiction over peti-
        tion for review from Board order withdrawing appeal without ex-
        pressly addressing the jurisdictional question).
               These courts have gone on to evaluate the Board’s decision
        to allow the withdrawal of the appeal. But none of our sister cir-
        cuits have reached the merits of the appeal that the Board deemed
        withdrawn, even when they have concluded that the Board erred.
        E.g., Madrigal, 572 F.3d at 241 (holding the Board erroneously
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        8                       Opinion of the Court                  21-13382

        deemed the appeal withdrawn and remanding to the Board “for
        further proceedings on the merits”); Lopez-Angel, 952 F.3d at 1049-
        50 (granting the petition to reinstate appeal to Board and “ex-
        press[ing] no opinion on the merits of that appeal”); Montano-Vega,
        721 F.3d at 1178 (“The only final order we have before us is the
        BIA’s order invoking § 1003.4 and holding [the petitioner’s] appeal
        abandoned . . . .”); Long, 420 F.3d 520-21 (concluding the Board cor-
        rectly deemed appeal withdrawn). We now join our sister circuits
        in both respects.
               We start with the question of whether the Board’s August
        31, 2021, decision granting Clement’s motion to withdraw is a final
        order of removal. A final order of removal “is a final order ‘con-
        cluding that the alien is deportable or ordering deportation.’”
        Nasrallah v. Barr, 140 S. Ct. 1683, 1691 (2020) (quoting 8 U.S.C.
        § 1101(a)(47)(A)). The Supreme Court has explained that we have
        jurisdiction to review only the rulings that “affect the validity of [a]
        final order of removal.” Id.
               We believe the Board’s August 31, 2021, order granting
        Clement’s motion to withdraw is a final order of removal subject
        to our review.
               For starters, the denial of a motion to reopen removal pro-
        ceedings is a final order of removal under Section 1252(a)(1). Mata,
        576 U.S. at 147-48. Accordingly, there is no dispute that the immi-
        gration judge’s underlying decision—the denial of Clement’s mo-
        tion to reopen—was subject to our review. See Patel v. U.S. Att’y
        Gen., 334 F.3d 1259, 1261 (11th Cir. 2003) (recognizing we have
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        21-13382               Opinion of the Court                          9

        jurisdiction “to review orders denying motions to reopen any such
        final order”).
               Next, although the Board’s August 31, 2021, order granting
        withdrawal of the appeal is not an actual denial of a motion to reo-
        pen, it “is the logical and functional equivalent of [a final] order.”
        Madrigal, 572 F.3d at 242; accord Lopez-Angel, 952 F.3d at 1047. Just
        like any other ruling that ends an appeal, an order declaring an ap-
        peal to be withdrawn “cut[s] off the petitioner’s opportunity for a
        substantive appellate determination” and gives “final effect to the
        immigration judge’s” underlying order denying the request to reo-
        pen. Madrigal, 572 F.3d at 242. As a practical matter, if we could not
        review the Board’s withdrawal orders, then the Board could insu-
        late removal orders from judicial review simply by deeming ap-
        peals withdrawn. The bottom line: because the Board’s withdrawal
        order gave effect to the immigration judge’s removal order, we
        have jurisdiction to review the Board’s August 31, 2021, with-
        drawal order.
               But the scope of our review of a withdrawal order is no dif-
        ferent from the scope of our review of any other final order of re-
        moval. We review the Board’s decision—not the immigration
        judge’s decision—unless the Board “expressly adopted” the immi-
        gration judge’s opinion. Ayala v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 605 F.3d 941, 947-
        48 (11th Cir. 2010) (quoting Kazemzadeh v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 577 F.3d
        1341, 1350 (11th Cir. 2009)). And we may review “only the rulings
        made by the immigration judge or Board of Immigration Appeals
        that affect the validity of the final order of removal.” Nasrallah, 140
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                  21-13382

        S. Ct. at 1691. The scope of our review reflects the well-established
        administrative law principle that “[t]he grounds upon which an ad-
        ministrative order must be judged are those upon which the record
        discloses that its action was based.” SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S.
        80, 87 (1943); accord Calcutt v. FDIC, 598 U.S. ___, 143 S. Ct. 1317,
        1318 (2023) (same).
               In this case, our review is limited to whether the Board cor-
        rectly deemed Clement’s appeal to be withdrawn. The Board did
        not expressly adopt the immigration judge’s decision with respect
        to Clement’s derivative citizenship claim such that we could re-
        view the merits of Clement’s arguments. Instead, the Board with-
        drew Clement’s appeal on his own motion, which brought Clem-
        ent’s administrative proceedings to a conclusion. We may review
        that determination, but Clement does not challenge it. Cf. Lopez-
        Angel, 952 F.3d at 1047 (challenging Board’s determination that pe-
        titioner withdrew appeal by leaving the country). Clement’s con-
        cession that the Board’s determination was correct to withdraw his
        appeal (with which we agree) resolves the only issue presented for
        our review.
                                       B.

               If Clement did not seek a declaration that he is a U.S. citizen,
        our review of his petition could end here. But Clement argues that
        we must review his claim to be a U.S. citizen, even if we would
        ordinarily not do so. Specifically, he contends Section 1252(b)(5)(A)
        grants courts a special kind of jurisdiction over citizenship claims.
        And he argues that grant of jurisdiction overrides any other
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        21-13382                Opinion of the Court                           11

        limitations on our jurisdiction under Section 1252. Put differently,
        Clement says we must reach the merits of his citizenship claim,
        even though we ordinarily would be limited to determining
        whether the Board correctly withdrew his appeal. Clement also
        asks us to overlook the fact that he voluntarily asked the Board to
        withdraw his appeal and deport him.
                The government cannot deport a citizen through the admin-
        istrative process that it uses for noncitizens. See Ng Fung Ho v. White,
        259 U.S. 276, 284 (1922). Section 1252(b)(5) provides for the “[t]reat-
        ment of nationality claims” that arise during this process. It says
        that, if a petitioner claims to be a U.S. citizen in removal proceed-
        ings, “and the court of appeals finds from the pleadings and affida-
        vits that no genuine issue of material fact about the petitioner’s na-
        tionality is presented, the court shall decide the nationality claim.”
        8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5)(A) (emphasis added). But if a genuine issue of
        material fact is presented, “the court shall transfer the proceeding
        to the district court of the United States for the judicial district in
        which the petitioner resides for a new hearing on the nationality
        claim.” Id. § 1252(b)(5)(B).
               We acknowledge that some of our sister circuits share Clem-
        ent’s view that Section 1252(b)(5)(A) is an independent jurisdic-
        tional grant for the courts of appeals to review citizenship claims.
        E.g., Dessouki v. Att’y Gen. of U.S., 915 F.3d 964, 966-67 (3d Cir. 2019);
        Duarte-Ceri v. Holder, 630 F.3d 83, 87 (2d Cir. 2010); Anderson v.
        Holder, 673 F.3d 1089, 1096 (9th Cir. 2012); Joseph v. Holder, 720 F.3d
        228, 230 (5th Cir. 2013). Our sister circuits have construed Section
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        12                      Opinion of the Court                  21-13382

        1252(b)(5)(A) as a jurisdictional grant based on their belief that the
        Constitution guarantees judicial review of a citizenship claim. See
        Dessouki, 915 F.3d at 967; Duarte-Ceri, 630 F.3d at 87; Anderson, 673
        F.3d at 1096; Joseph, 720 F.3d at 230.
                We need not answer questions about whether the Constitu-
        tion or Section 1252(b)(5)(A) provides us with jurisdiction to decide
        citizenship claims like the one presented by Clement. Even if we
        assume—without deciding—that our sister circuits are correct that
        we have jurisdiction over such claims, we conclude that an individ-
        ual can forfeit the right to judicial review of a citizenship claim. In
        fact, the same Supreme Court precedents that support the idea that
        there is a constitutional right to judicial review of a citizenship
        claim also establish that this right (if it exists) does not extend to a
        citizenship claim that a person abandons.
               Clement’s right-to-review argument is based on the Su-
        preme Court’s 1922 decision in Ng Fung Ho. There, the Court ex-
        plained that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment pro-
        tects against the deprivation of liberty that would result from de-
        porting a citizen “without the sanction afforded by judicial pro-
        ceedings.” 259 U.S. at 284-85. The Court reasoned that “[j]urisdic-
        tion in the executive to order deportation exists only if the person
        arrested is an alien.” Id. at 284. Accordingly, Clement argues that
        we must review his claim that the derivative citizen laws are un-
        constitutional to the extent they render him a noncitizen.
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        21-13382                 Opinion of the Court                             13

              There are limits, however, on the Court’s reasoning in Ng
        Fung Ho and its import for Section 1252(b)(5)(A). Three are relevant
        here.
                First, in a later decision, the Court discussed the limits of ju-
        dicial review over deportation proceedings and held that “[o]nly in
        the event an alleged alien asserts his United States citizenship in the hear-
        ing before the Department, and supports his claim by substantial evi-
        dence, is he entitled to a trial de novo of that issue in the district
        court.” Kessler v. Strecker, 307 U.S. 22, 34-35 (1939) (emphasis
        added); see also United States v. Sing Tuck, 194 U.S. 161, 167-68 (1904)
        (holding administrative exhaustion is a prerequisite to judicial re-
        view of a citizenship claim in exclusion proceedings). Accordingly,
        the right of a person subject to deportation to judicial review of a
        citizenship claim is limited by a requirement that the person pursue
        the claim in an administrative forum.
                Second, the description of the citizenship question as “juris-
        dictional” in Ng Fung Ho does not necessarily mean citizenship
        claims must be treated differently as a matter of procedure than
        other kinds of claims. The Supreme Court has recently held that
        the question whether the Executive can properly take an action and
        the question whether it has the jurisdiction to do so are ultimately
        the same question. See City of Arlington v. FCC, 569 U.S. 290, 297-98
        (2013). “A court’s power to decide a case is independent of whether
        its decision is correct,” so “a jurisdictionally proper but substan-
        tively incorrect judicial decision is not ultra vires.” Id. at 297. But,
        unlike a court, the Executive’s improper acts and acts outside its
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        14                      Opinion of the Court                   21-13382

        “jurisdiction” suffer from the same problem; both are ultra vires
        because the Executive only has the authority to act within the
        bounds of the law. Id. Because “there is no principled basis” on
        which we may distinguish jurisdictional errors from other kinds of
        errors by the Executive, id. at 298, we do not believe the description
        of the citizenship question as “jurisdictional” in Ng Fung Ho, by it-
        self, requires review of a citizenship claim if that review would not
        be afforded to any other kind of claim.
                Third, like constitutional rights, a litigant ordinarily may for-
        feit statutory rights. Statutory rights are presumptively subject to
        waiver and forfeiture. See United States v. Mezzanatto, 513 U.S. 196,
        200-01 (1995) (“Rather than deeming waiver [of a statutory right]
        presumptively unavailable absent some sort of express enabling
        clause, we instead have adhered to the opposite presumption.”);
        Stern v. Marshall, 564 U.S. 462, 480-82 (2011) (holding that a litigant
        forfeited a statutory right, noting the litigant “does not explain
        why” the relevant “statutory limitation may not be . . . waived”).
        Although Section 1252(b)(5)(A) uses mandatory language directed
        at courts about how to adjudicate a citizenship claim, it is silent as
        to whether a person may waive or forfeit the right to judicial re-
        view of a citizenship claim. We therefore have no reason to think
        Congress precluded the forfeiture of citizenship claims through
        Section 1252(b)(5)(A). So, even if Section 1252(b)(5)(A) gives us
        freestanding jurisdiction to adjudicate citizenship claims (and we
        are not deciding that it does), we conclude that a litigant may forfeit
        the benefit of that provision.
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        21-13382               Opinion of the Court                         15

                The upshot is that, even if we have constitutionally
        grounded jurisdiction to review legal claims that go to a person’s
        citizenship, a person can forfeit our review. We believe Clement
        did so here. Clement raised his citizenship claim before the immi-
        gration judge, appealed to the Board, then asked that his appeal be
        withdrawn so that he could be deported. In any other circum-
        stance, this litigation conduct would be sufficient to forfeit a con-
        stitutional or statutory right to judicial review.
                Ordinarily, a mere lack of diligence is sufficient to forfeit a
        constitutional or statutory right. For example, a criminal defendant
        in our legal system has “numerous opportunities to challenge the
        constitutionality of his conviction,” but the “vehicles for review,
        however, are not available indefinitely and without limitation.”
        Daniels v. United States, 532 U.S. 374, 381 (2001). And so, “[p]roce-
        dural barriers, such as statutes of limitations and rules concerning
        procedural default and exhaustion of remedies, operate to limit ac-
        cess to review on the merits of a constitutional claim.” Id. Likewise,
        a criminal defendant forfeits the right to the assistance of counsel
        by failing to secure counsel in a reasonable time. See United States v.
        Fowler, 605 F.2d 181, 183 (5th Cir. 1979). So too in civil cases may a
        person forfeit a constitutional right merely by failing to comply
        with a statutory requirement. See, e.g., Tyler v. Hennepin Cnty., 598
        U.S. ___, 143 S. Ct. 1369, 1378-79 (2023) (explaining that property
        owners in Nelson v. City of New York, 352 U.S. 103 (1956) forfeited
        their constitutional right to surplus from a tax sale by failing to
        comply with the state law procedure for requesting the surplus).
        To the Supreme Court, “[n]o procedural principle is more familiar
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        16                      Opinion of the Court                  21-13382

        . . . than that a constitutional right may be forfeited in criminal as
        well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right
        before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it.” Yakus v.
        United States, 321 U.S. 414, 444 (1944).
                Unlike these careless forfeitures, a person may also forfeit a
        constitutional or statutory right when he voluntary acts in a man-
        ner that is inconsistent with the vindication of that right. For exam-
        ple, volunteering self-incriminating testimony in a civil case “will
        often forfeit the right to exclude the evidence in a subsequent crim-
        inal case,” despite the constitutional privilege against self-incrimi-
        nation. Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760, 771 (2003) (internal quota-
        tion marks omitted). A criminal defendant’s choice to “deliberately
        abandon[]” a constitutional claim in state court may forfeit judicial
        review of that claim in federal court. See Smith v. Murray, 477 U.S.
        527, 534-35 (1986). And our sister circuits have recognized that a
        litigant who accepts a default judgment after initially arguing a lack
        personal jurisdiction forfeits a Fourteenth Amendment personal ju-
        risdiction defense. E.g., City of New York v. Mickalis Pawn Shop, LLC,
        645 F.3d 114, 135 (2d Cir. 2011); e360 Insight v. The Spamhaus Project,
        500 F.3d 594, 599-600 (7th Cir. 2007).
              Clement’s withdrawal of his appeal to the Board fits this lat-
        ter, more obvious, category of forfeitures. The problem here is not
        that Clement did not raise his citizenship claim before the Board;
        the problem is that he voluntarily ended the proceedings and
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        21-13382                   Opinion of the Court                               17

        explicitly asked to be deported. 1 Twice presented with an oppor-
        tunity to avail himself of the administrative process and appeal the
        order of removal against him to the Board, Clement chose not to—
        once when he waived appeal of the original June 16, 2020, order
        and again when he filed his motion to withdraw his appeal of the
        April 30, 2021, order. And his request to be deported in his with-
        drawal motion proves that Clement fully understood the conse-
        quences of his decision to abandon the process. Clement is not
        guilty of mere carelessness in the form of a missed filing deadline
        or failure to exhaust an argument. Instead, his request to withdraw
        his appeal and be deported is fundamentally inconsistent with the
        exercise of a right to judicial review. Given Clement’s specific re-
        quest to be deported, he waived any right to have this Court deter-
        mine his citizenship claim.
               We recognize that the Ninth Circuit has said that a peti-
        tioner’s waiver of appeal of an order of deportation did not forfeit
        judicial review of a citizenship claim. See Rivera v. Ashcroft, 394 F.3d
        1129, 1136-37 (9th Cir. 2005). In Rivera, the court held that a

        1 We note that we are not deciding whether a petitioner with a citizenship
        claim must satisfy Section 1252(d)(1)’s exhaustion requirement to obtain judi-
        cial review. A failure to exhaust is of a different character than Clement’s af-
        firmative acceptance of the immigration judge’s decision. Cf. Poole v. Mukasey,
        522 F.3d 259, 264 (2d Cir. 2008) (holding an exhaustion requirement does not
        apply to citizenship claims because a person must voluntarily give up a citi-
        zenship claim); Moussa v. INS, 302 F.3d 823, 825 (8th Cir. 2002) (holding Section
        1252(d)(1) does not apply to citizenship claims because the exhaustion require-
        ment “do[es] not apply to ‘any person’ challenging a final order of removal,
        only to an ‘alien’—precisely what [the petitioner] claims not to be”).
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        18                      Opinion of the Court                  21-13382

        person’s willingness to accept deportation through the administra-
        tive process did not bar a future habeas petition that raised a citi-
        zenship claim. Id. We decline to adopt the reasoning in Rivera for
        three reasons.
               First, Rivera was litigated in a very different procedural pos-
        ture. Rivera did not petition for review from a deportation pro-
        ceeding; instead, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus after
        his deportation proceedings concluded. Id. at 1133. Because Ri-
        vera’s citizenship claim came to the Ninth Circuit on appeal from
        the district court’s denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus,
        Rivera’s actions during the administrative removal proceedings
        were not directly related to his appeal. In contrast, Clement’s peti-
        tion for review follows directly from the very process that he vol-
        untarily abandoned. Rather than seeking judicial review through
        another door like Rivera, Clement asks us to re-open a door that
        he closed on himself.
                Second, whatever the merits of its forfeiture analysis, Rivera
        has been superseded by statute. At the time of Rivera, Congress had
        not yet enacted the REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-13, 119
        Stat. 306, which amended Section 1252 to eliminate habeas review
        of removal orders. See INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 314 (2001); Alex-
        andre v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 452 F.3d 1204, 1206 (11th Cir. 2006). Now,
        a petitioner cannot file a writ of habeas corpus to challenge his de-
        portation. So the Ninth Circuit approved a procedure in Rivera that
        has since been barred by statute.
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        21-13382               Opinion of the Court                       19

               Third, unlike the petitioner in Rivera, Clement did not pas-
        sively accept deportation—he explicitly requested it. Rivera merely
        waived his appeal of the immigration judge’s original order of re-
        moval. Rivera never filed a motion to reopen because the Attorney
        General deported him first. But Rivera did not withdraw his appeal
        or ask to be deported. 394 F.3d at 1133. Here, not only did Clement
        accept deportation by waiving appeal of the immigration judge’s
        original order, Clement also asked the Board to “be deported” ra-
        ther than continue his appeal of the immigration judge’s denial of
        his motion to reopen.
               We hold that Clement forfeited any right to judicial review
        of his claims by withdrawing his appeal to the Board of Immigra-
        tion Appeals and asking to be deported.
                                       IV.

               Although we have jurisdiction to determine whether the
        Board of Immigration Appeals erroneously withdrew Clement’s
        appeal, he does not argue the Board did. He has also forfeited judi-
        cial review of his claims by withdrawing his appeal and asking to
        be deported. For these reasons, the petition for review is DENIED.
               Clement also moved to transfer this case to the United States
        District Court for the District of New Jersey on the ground that
        there are “genuine issue[s] of material fact” about his claim that
        former 8 U.S.C. § 1432(a) unconstitutionally discriminates based
        on gender and race. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(5)(B). Because we con-
        clude that Clement forfeited any right to judicial review of that
        claim, there is no genuine issue of material fact that requires us to
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        20                    Opinion of the Court                 21-13382

        transfer this case to the district court. Accordingly, Clement’s mo-
        tion to transfer is DENIED.