Court Opinion

ID: 9498290
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:13:37.305265+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:44.695687
License: Public Domain

JACOBS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Shobinder Gill, a citizen of India who became a lawful permanent resident in 1994 and has been convicted of two offenses while still in college, appeals from an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) (affirming the ruling of an Immigration Judge (“IJ”)) that one of Gill’s offenses (attempted reckless assault with a deadly weapon, to wit, a firearm) amounts to a Crime Involving Moral Turpitude (“CIMT”)-a ruling that mandates removal under section 237(a)(2)(A)© of the *92Immigration and Naturalization Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)®. There is no defect in that ruling, and we lack jurisdiction to seek one.
In reversing, the majority opinion conceives sua sponte the argument that an “attempt” at reckless conduct is an incoherent basis for the level of intent required for a CIMT, and is satisfied that “the merits of his legal incoherence argument are clear-cut in his favor.”. First, the argument is not “his”; it is raised sua sponte by the majority. When judges raise an issue sua sponte and consider it without briefing, no one should be surprised that the issue seems to them to be “clear-cut.” In any event, because Gill never raised that argument to the BIA, the argument is unexhausted, and this Court therefore lacks jurisdiction to consider it.
The majority premises appellate jurisdiction on the idea that the argument is “subsidiary” to an argument that Gill did make (that “reckless” conduct involves insufficient mens rea), and on the “manifest injustice” that would ensue if the argument is not enlisted to keep Gill in the United States. The supposed “manifest injustice” (according to the majority) is that the argument Gill omitted to make is valid, and that Gill is a lawful resident and an honor student. I conclude: that the argument decided by the majority is unex-hausted; that exhaustion is required no matter how effective an argument may seem on appeal; and that Gill’s status as an honor student confers no jurisdiction (though it may confer on his unfortunate parents the right to display a bumper sticker). I therefore respectfully dissent.
I
In January 1999, Gill was convicted in New York County of theft of services, in violation of N.Y.P.L. § 165.15, a misdemeanor. In June 1999, Gill pled guilty in Queens County to an attempt to commit intentional assault with a deadly weapon, a felony. N.Y.P.L. §§ 110 (attempt); 120.05(2) (assault). In August, the INS initiated removal proceedings pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)® on the ground-uncontested in the majority opinion-that an attempt to commit intentional assault is a CIMT. When the INS learned of the theft of services, that was added to the removal petition.
As the IJ observed, Gill retained a lawyer “who was obviously well-schooled in immigration law,” and who, while removal proceedings were in an early stage, “went back to Criminal Court [in both counties of conviction] and had [Gill’s] prior convictions amended.” The attempted assault conviction was reduced from intentional to reckless (still a felony), and the theft of services conviction was reduced to disorderly conduct (a violation).
The INS conceded that disorderly conduct was not ground for removal, but maintained that the assault conviction was still a CIMT. Gill argued that the charge did not involve the mens rea required for a CIMT because it was for a reckless assault rather than one that was intentional. The IJ initially agreed, but in November 2000 granted the INS’s motion to reconsider, noting that he would have reconsidered his ruling sua sponte because he had made a mistake of law. By written order in February 2002, the IJ held that Gill had committed a CIMT and therefore was removable.
There is no sign in the record that Gill raised an issue as to whether attempted recklessness is a cognizable mental status under New York law.
Gill’s counsel argued to the BIA that the IJ erred in granting the motion to reconsider and that “reckless conduct does not involve moral turpitude.” Neither Gill nor *93the INS nor the BIA raised an issue as to whether “recklessness” can be “attempted” under New York law; the word “attempt” appears nowhere in the argument section of Gill’s appeal to the BIA. The BIA concluded that the motion to reconsider was appropriately granted, and agreed with the IJ that Gill’s conviction is a CIMT.
Gill timely appealed to this Court, presenting the same two challenges: one concerning the propriety of the INS’s motion to reconsider (a non-starter because the IJ would have reconsidered sua sponte); the second as to whether a reckless assault is a CIMT. Gill’s brief presents his second argument this way:
Petitioner was convicted of a crime alleging reckless conduct (New York Penal Law § 120.05(4)). There is no evidence of mens rea set forth in the New York statute to determine that Petitioner committed a crime involving moral turpitude.
Gill’s brief nowhere highlights that the offense is one of attempt, or cites to the New York Penal Law governing attempt, or argues that the attempt (as opposed to completion) matters; the word “attempt” appears once, where counsel recites the offense of conviction among the facts.
II
“A court may review a final order of removal only if [ ] the alien has exhausted all administrative remedies available to the alien as of right.” 8 U.S.C. § 1252(d)(1). “Failure to exhaust [these remedies] constitutes a clear jurisdictional bar.” Foster v. INS, 376 F.3d 75, 77 (2d Cir.2004) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). So if Gill failed to exhaust a claim before the INS, we lack jurisdiction to review it. See Beharry v. Ashcroft, 329 F.3d 51, 59 (2d Cir.2003). This statutory exhaustion requirement is mandatory, not discretionary. Id. at 56-57; Bastek v. Fed. Crop Ins. Corp., 145 F.3d 90, 94 (2d Cir.1998). And it is not subject to judicial exception. See Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 741 n. 6, 121 S.Ct. 1819, 149 L.Ed.2d 958 (2001); see also Beharry, 329 F.3d at 57-58.
The majority opinion does not contend that the argument on which it rests was actually made below; instead, it contends that the “argument is subsidiary to the general argument Gill did make before the BIA: that his crime of conviction did not reflect a sufficiently culpable mental state to be designated a CIMT.”. This is error because: [i] the majority opinion casts Gill’s argument in the BIA at a higher level of generality than Gill ever did; and [ii] the “attempted recklessness” argument on which the majority relies is not “subsidiary” to the argument that Gill in fact made.
As demonstrated above, Gill’s whole argument to the BIA, as set out in the first sentence of his argument on CIMT classification, was: “The Board must conclude that recMess conduct does not involve moral turpitude and that the [IJ] erred in finding otherwise.” Gill made no broader argument that “his crime of conviction” reflects generally an “insufficiently culpable mental state”; he argued (over and over) that the “recklessness” constitutes the insufficiency:
While the respondent, Gill, in the case before [the BIA] used a weapon, he stands convicted only of reckless conduct; and, therefore, he did not have the requisite mens rea required to compel [the BIA] to find that the crime involved an act of moral turpitude.
* * * * * *
Recklessness is defined in Black’s Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition as: rashness, heedlessness, and wanton conduct.
*94What is significant is the absence of the word intent.
* * ‡ ^ * *
[In an earlier case, the BIA] decided that while reckless conduct... may form the basis for a determination that a crime involves moral turpitude [the BIA has never held] that a crime involving reckless conduct is per se a crime involving moral turpitude.
* * * Hi * *
Reckless conduct may not necessarily involve moral turpitude....
******
The [BIA], without particular emphasis or fanfare appears to have developed at least two separate and distinct lines of cases which relate to whether or not a conviction for a crime of reckless conduct is also one involving moral turpitude.
Appellate opinions that undertake to address “subsidiary” arguments to those raised in the BIA do so only because consideration of the appellate argument does not subvert the purpose of administrative exhaustion in the immigration context: to provide the INS, “as the agency responsible for construing and applying the immigration laws and implementing regulations” with “a full opportunity to consider a petitioner’s claims before they are submitted for review by a federal court.” See Foster, 376 F.3d at 77 (quoting Theodoropoulos v. INS, 358 F.3d 162, 171 (2d Cir.2004)). The majority seizes on a single sentence in Foster that more expansively says “issues” must be raised before the BIA in order to be exhausted. This context-free quote puts more weight on the word “issue” than it will bear: the raising of an “issue” in the BIA matters only if it is one that alerted the agency to the issue that is being taken up on appeal. In light of the purpose of the exhaustion requirement, an issue may be “subsidiary” (and therefore within our jurisdiction even though not argued in so many words) if consideration of it was necessarily prompted by consideration of an issue expressly argued, or if it was necessarily rejected by the same logic, or if there is some other sufficient sign that the BIA had a full opportunity to consider it. See Foster, 376 F.3d at 78. Otherwise, the doctrine of “subsidiary” issues would nullify the exhaustion requirement.
Thus in Foster the petitioner’s “general protestations [to the BIA] that his removal was improper” did not let him argue on appeal that his crime of conviction was not an aggravated felony requiring removal because it was not a “crime of violence.” Id. at 77-78. The Court found no exhaustion notwithstanding that Foster appeared pro se and that the Court therefore construed his submissions “generously.” Id. at 78. A fortiori, Gill and his counsel cannot be deemed to have exhausted an argument that they never made.
Gill argued before the BIA that a reckless assault entails an insufficient mens rea to be a CIMT. The BIA ruled otherwise, and the majority acknowledges that that ruling commands Chevron deference. On this appeal, the majority poses and answers the question whether reckless assault amounts to a CIMT if it is attempted rather than completed. The question whether CIMT classification is supported by one mens rea is not “subsidiary” to the question whether such classification is supported by a different mens rea altogether. Ironically, the majority’s holding itself depends on drawing a critical distinction between the mens rea of recklessness (which is indisputably cognizable) and the mens rea of attempted recklessness (which the majority deems legally incoherent).
*95Drax v. Reno, 338 F.3d 98 (2d Cir.2003), neatly draws the distinction between an issue that is subsidiary and one that is not. Drax argued unsuccessfully before the BIA that he was entitled to relief under § 212(c) and under § 245(a); on appeal, the Court undertook to decide whether the two could be read together to afford relief even though neither section alone would do, and accurately characterized its analysis as “merely an extension of the argument” made below. 338 F.3d at 112 n. 19. At the same time, the Court suggested that a retroactivity issue presented on appeal was unexhausted (and that appellate jurisdiction as to it was therefore lacking) even though Drax had raised below various other retroactivity arguments, as well as the issue of retroactivity generally. 338 F.3d at 110 n. 17.
Drax observes a vital distinction between two appellate arguments, one of which was subsidiary to an argument below while the other was not. Tellingly, the majority in the present appeal thinks that these two parts of Drax are in “tension” with each other. But the only tension is between Drax and the majority opinion here.
In Restrepo v. McElroy, 369 F.3d 627, 633 n. 10 (2d Cir.2004), this Court held that a “Petitioner adequately exhausted his administrative remedies with regard to his retroactivity argument .... because the BIA’s decision addressed the retroac-tivity [argument] and considered the relevant authorities” (emphasis added). The question decided in the majority opinion in the present case turns on the interaction between federal immigration law and New York state precedent holding that for various purposes “reckless attempt” is not a cognizable mental state. The BIA was never presented with that argument, or alerted to it by citation to New York case law.
If the BIA had reviewed and decided that attempted reckless assault with a firearm is a CIMT, the BIA’s conclusion would be owed deference, regardless of whether such a mens rea is legally cognizable for other purposes under New York law. Because there was no BIA review, the majority opinion examines the question de novo. Thus Gill’s failure to exhaust resulted in a more favorable standard of review, and an evasion of the agency to which Congress committed the task of deciding that claim in the first place.
Ill
The majority opinion advances an alternative theory in dicta, which constitutes the second (and last) leg of the stool on which the majority expects to seat jurisdiction.13 The majority thinks that even if Gill failed to exhaust agency review, we must avoid “manifest injustice” by making an exception to the statutory exhaustion requirement in light of Gill’s supposedly compelling personal circumstances: that he has been in the United States since age nine, that he became a lawful permanent resident six years after arrival, that his father and some other relatives are in this country, and that he is an honor student in college.
The Supreme Court has held that statutory exhaustion requirements are not subject to judicial exception-making. Booth, 532 U.S. at 741 n. 6, 121 S.Ct. 1819; see also Beharry, 329 F.3d at 57-58. The Court has suggested, however, the possi*96bility of two narrow exceptions (though each of these exceptions “may technically be less an ‘exception’ to a statutory exhaustion requirement than it is a statement regarding the parameters of that requirement,” id. at 58). Thus courts may not be bound by congressional limitations on jurisdiction that raise constitutional problems (such as stripping the courts of all habeas review in violation of the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, Art. I, sec. 9). See INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 305, 121 S.Ct. 2271, 150 L.Ed.2d 347 (2001). The Supreme Court has also suggested that exhaustion requirements (in particular) do not apply if there is no possibility of relief from the administrative agency, in which event “the administrative officers would presumably have no authority to act on the subject of the complaint, leaving the [complainant] with nothing to exhaust.” Booth, 532 U.S. at 736 & n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 1819. These limited exceptions notwithstanding, “as a general rule courts are required to strictly enforce statutory exhaustion requirements.” Theodoropoulos, 358 F.3d at 172-73.
In Foster, this Court determined that statutory jurisdiction was lacking because the petitioner had not exhausted his claim- and declined to find an exception based on alleged “constitutional concerns.” Foster, 376 F.3d at 78. After reviewing the cases cited for the proposition that courts may reach beyond statutory jurisdiction where constitutional concerns are implicated, we observed that those cases “involve potential denials of all judicial review.” Id. (emphasis in original). Since Foster had access to judicial review (for the claims he preserved) the Court concluded that no constitutional concern was presented.
In Theodoropoulos, we declined to fix “the precise boundaries” of the possible exception to exhaustion requirements, but concluded (sensibly) that the exception would not reach a case in which the relief sought by the petitioner for the first time on appeal was relief that the agency had power to grant. Theodoropoulos, 358 F.3d at 172-73.
Foster and Theodoropoulos thus take account of the Supreme Court’s opinions in St. Cyr and Booth: this Court must require exhaustion unless either [i] the requirement offends the Constitution by foreclosing all judicial review (or otherwise), or [ii] the relief is of a type only a court, and not the agency, could provide in the first place. These few, narrow exceptions are no more than necessary: a statutory jurisdictional exhaustion requirement should not be read to offend any constitutional requirement, and could not be meant to limit claims that are incapable of exhaustion.
In Gill’s case, there is no arguable exception to the exhaustion requirement. As in Foster, denial of jurisdiction as to Gill’s unexhausted claim will not deprive the petitioner of any constitutional right. And Gill’s right to judicial review is unimpaired-though limited of course to the claims that Gill raised below. See Foster, 376 F.3d at 78. The majority is reaching, as Theodoropoulos did not, to decide a claim that the agency had full competence to consider and to redress. Had Gill raised his argument below, the agency had power to grant him relief. If the BIA came to the same conclusion as the majority, the same relief would have been granted. See Theodoropoulos, 358 F.3d at 173 (“Regardless of the precise boundaries of any possible exception we find that it would not apply to the case at hand because an appeal to the BIA did provide Theodoropoulos with the possibility of relief.”).
In seeking a way to overcome the exhaustion requirement, the majority relies on a single case, decided by a panel of this *97Court last year, that describes a “manifest injustice” exception to the jurisdictional bar. Marrero Pichardo v. Ashcroft, 374 F.3d 46 (2d Cir.2004). The majority concludes that Marrero Pichardo created a new exception to the jurisdictional requirement for sympathetic petitioners with appealing or interesting claims. If so, Marrero Pichardo must have overruled Theodoropoulos and directly contravened Supreme Court precedent. But Marrero Pichardo does not purport to alter any precedent (and could not do so in any event). Marrero Pichardo found jurisdiction to review unexhausted claims of a habeas petitioner on the ground that the petitioner fell into the “narrow leeway afforded by Theodoropoulos.” Marrero Pichardo, 374 F.3d at 53. I therefore read the term “manifest injustice” to reference “the limited circumstances” expressly described in Theodoropoulos, i.e., those in which judicial review is unconstitutionally foreclosed or agency relief is unavailable. Theodoropoulos, 358 F.3d at 173.
The Court in Marrero Pichardo must have concluded that the facts of that case fell within the exceptions suggested by St. Cyr and Booth. As the majority reads Marrero Pichardo, it sub silentio overrules Theodoropoulos, which expressly held that (absent a constitutional problem) there is no exception to the exhaustion requirement for any claim that could have been raised in the BIA. The majority cf.s a panel of the Ninth Circuit for the idea that the contours of the exceptions to the exhaustion rule “remain to be fully developed”, and then contends that Marrero Pichardo “simply adds further definition to these boundaries in analyzing the facts of the case,”. This is an unreliable way to go about defining jurisdictional boundaries. If jurisdiction can be improvised in each case, and if the boundaries are drawn and re-drawn by inference from the fact recitation in each ease that invokes “manifest injustice”, there is no jurisdictional boundary to speak of.
Marrero Pichardo cannot support the proposition that a court can find jurisdiction to overrule an agency result whenever jurisdiction will assist a sympathetic petitioner; there is no such thing as jurisdiction of the heart.
Even if “manifest injustice” could confer jurisdiction in this kind of case, Gill would not be a likely candidate for that indulgence. What brought Gill to the point of removal in the first place? The record does not show particulars of the conduct that caused two New York Counties to prosecute Gill for a felony and a misdemeanor, respectively. Because the one conviction became irrelevant to removal, and because, under this Circuit’s “categorical” approach to analyzing crimes involving moral turpitude, the underlying conduct would not matter to CIMT analysis (though it might if a categorical approach yields an “incoherent” answer).
However, the absence of any record as to the underlying conduct frustrates any useful inquiry into the “factors” in Gill’s case that bear upon whether his removal would work “manifest injustice.” As Gill’s counsel assiduously kept this information out of the record before the IJ and BIA, we have no idea. However, one does not usually plead to something more turpitudi-nous than what one did; and the charge to which Gill plead originally-attempted intentional assault with a deadly weapon, to wit, a firearm-does not provoke anguished sympathy on his behalf. Even a conviction of “attempted reckless” assault means that Gill was an armed menace.
Gill may be at a tender age, but two convictions-one on a felony-while still at a tender age bespeaks a prodigious criminal career. When the majority opinion considers “manifest injustice” in terms of the *98“interests at stake”, the opinion overlooks the interests of the American public in the removal of persons who commit crimes while guests of the republic. Gill’s opportunity to be in this country was a privilege granted with permanent resident status. Congress has decided that one loses that privilege by committing a crime of moral turpitude. Because Gill has done just that, his removal is no “manifest injustice.”
The majority treats Gill’s offense as conceptually incoherent or metaphysical. It was not. Gill originally plead guilty to attempted intentional assault with a firearm.14 There is nothing metaphysical about that. According to the majority, the conviction was rendered incoherent-under New York state law-when Gill induced the court to amend it to say that the attempted assault with a gun was reckless rather than intentional. If any offense deemed conceptually incoherent by the New York courts cannot support removal as a CIMT, we had better look out, because as the majority opinion shows, the New York courts deem incoherent such offenses as attempt to commit kidnapping in the first degree, one element of which is the unintended death of the victim; and attempted second degree murder, “ie., cause someone’s death by recklessly engaging] in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person under circumstances evincing depraved indifference to human life.” (internal quotation marks omitted). True, New York courts will grant relief to a defendant convicted of such an “incoherent” offense; but Gill didn’t appeal entry of judgment on the incoherent offense; he invited it. And pleas to these incoherent offenses are enforceable. People v. Foster, 19 N.Y.2d 150, 153-54, 278 N.Y.S.2d 603, 225 N.E.2d 200 (1967).
In any event, having sought re-classification of his offense, Gill is in no position to make the argument that the offense (as reclassified) is incoherent. And actually, he hasn’t. The majority has reached to do it, sua sponte and without briefing, claiming a jurisdiction that is far more incoherent and elusive conceptually than Gill’s attempt to do a reckless thing with a gun, and has decided an issue not presented to the agency, not considered or decided by it, and not presented here either. The chance of getting the law right under these circumstances is much diminished.
* * * * * *
The only challenges properly before us are that [i] the IJ erred in granting the INS’s motion to reconsider, thereby reversing its earlier holding that Gill’s crime of conviction was not a CIMT, and [ii] the BIA erred in determining that Gill’s reckless assault was a CIMT. Both are without merit, and I would therefore deny the petition.

. The majority emphasizes that the judicial exhaustion doctrine is satisfied. That doctrine is a prudential measure to assure that arguments presented to us have been adequately developed in the record below. But, as we lack statutory jurisdiction, it cannot matter what prudence allows.

. The majority contends that Gill "pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree assault in violation of N.Y.P.L. § 120.05(4)-that is, attempting to 'recklessly cause[ ] serious physical injury to another person by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument.' ” Gill originally pleaded guilty to attempted intentional assault in violation of N.Y.P.L. § 120.05(2), which is attempting assault "with intent to cause physical injury to another person....”