Court Opinion

ID: 9495880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:12:43.695997+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:15.142862
License: Public Domain

BERZON, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the opinion’s analysis of our prior decision in Contreras-Aragon v. INS, 852 F.2d 1088 (9th Cir.1988) (en banc). Our holding in the present case is based on extensive changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) brought about by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (“IIRIRA”), Pub.L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009 (Sept. 30, 1996). Of particular pertinence are the current absence of an automatic stay of removal in response to an alien’s petition for judicial review and the critical consideration that leaving the country no longer voids an alien’s petition.
I write separately, however, to emphasize my conviction that this court retains equitable jurisdiction to stay the availability of a voluntary departure period if the merits of an alien’s underlying case justify a stay of his or her removal order. It is critical to the result in this case that the petitioner applied for and was denied a stay of removal. This court has thus determined that petitioner’s merits petition was not strong enough to support a stay of removal. The only question presented, therefore, is whether petitioner’s voluntary departure grant was automatically tolled, as it had been under Contreras-Aragon, simply because there was a petition for review pending in this court. I agree with the opinion’s conclusion that automatic tolling no longer applies, at least absent an administrative decision otherwise.
Under IIRIRA and our post-IIRIRA case law, however, I think (1) that individuals in removal proceedings who petition this court for review and a stay of an order of removal should — if they meet the equitable standards for obtaining such a stay— be entitled to a stay of the availability of the ancillary benefit of voluntary departure; and (2) that the temporary stays we issue under DeLeon v. INS, 115 F.3d 643 (9th Cir.1997), should also stay the availability of voluntary departure pending determination of any stay motion concerning an alien’s removal order.
Contreras-Aragon did not address the question of our equitable power to stay the availability of grants of voluntary departure if we affirmatively -stay the order of removal, the “stick” to voluntary departure’s “carrot.” Voluntary departure is an alternative to mandatory removal. Once the removal order is stayed, the privilege of voluntary departure has no salutary function.
There is nothing in the statute or the applicable regulations precluding such a stay of the voluntary departure period as part of the interim relief granted when a stay of removal is appropriate. The time limit on periods of voluntary departure contained in 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(b)(2) does not refer to any starting or ending date. Rather, the statute simply prescribes that “[p]ermission to depart voluntarily ... shall not be valid for a period exceeding 60 days.” Nor do the underlying regulations indicate when the period granted for voluntary departure is to begin or end, as opposed to the total time period within which the departure is to take place. See 8 C.F.R. § 240.26(e) (“If voluntary departure is granted at the conclusion of proceedings, the immigration judge may grant a period not to exceed 60 days.” (emphasis added)).
Consequently, as far as the statute and regulations are concerned, some or all of a voluntary departure period could ensue after any decision by this court. If a stay of removal is issued before the period of voluntary departure expires, the permissible *1176total sixty-day period could be accommodated by tolling that period while a stay of removal is in place, without violating the statutory time limit. Such tolling makes sense, since the privilege of voluntary departure is ancillary to an order of removal, its purpose being to preclude the necessity for the INS affirmatively to remove someone. See 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(a)(l) (“The Attorney General may permit an alien voluntarily to depart the United States at the alien’s own expense .... ” (emphasis added)).
The statutory preclusions on review of voluntary departure orders are carefully and narrowly worded, and do not preclude stays of grants of voluntary departure. 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(f) reads: “No court shall have jurisdiction over an appeal from denial oí ... voluntary departure ... nor shall any court order a stay of an alien’s removal pending consideration of any claim with respect to voluntary departure.” (Emphasis added.) If voluntary departure is granted rather than denied, the first part of this section does not apply. The second part of § 1229c(f) only prohibits stays of removal pending consideration of voluntary departure claims, not the opposite, stays of granted periods of voluntary departure pending consideration of removal orders. That certain kinds of stays pertaining to voluntary departure orders are prohibited but not others is, under the case law interpreting IIRIRA, a strong indication that, except as limited by the statute, we retain our traditional equitable power to issue stays preserving the status quo. See Andreiu v. Ashcroft, 253 F.3d 477, 481-82 (9th Cir.2001) (en banc) (reading the term “enjoin” as not pertaining to stays, in part because there is another provision of IIRIRA pertaining to stays that does not broadly prohibit them and “Congress knew very well how to use the term ‘stay’ when it wanted to”); Maharaj v. Ashcroft, 295 F.3d 963, 965 (9th Cir.2002) (“the terms in section 1252(f) should be given their particular, precise meanings rather than interpreted more generally”); Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm., 525 U.S. 471, 482, 487, 119 S.Ct. 936, 142 L.Ed.2d 940 (1999) (reading § 1252(g) narrowly as limiting jurisdiction only with regard to certain, not all, acts of the Attorney General in the course of the removal process; “[i]t is implausible that the mention of three discrete events along the road to deportation was a shorthand way of referring to all claims arising from deportation proceedings.”).
The other section of IIRIRA pertaining to review of voluntary departure grants is 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(B)(i), denying courts jurisdiction to review “judgment[s] regarding the granting of relief under section 212(h), 212(i), 240A, 240B, or 245 That section does not address the scope of our authority to issue stays when we do have jurisdiction to grant relief, as when there is an order of removal over which we have jurisdiction. Moreover, we have interpreted this section as not precluding jurisdiction over decisions concerning eligibility for relief, Montero-Martinez v. Ashcroft, 277 F.3d 1137, 1142-43 (9th Cir.2001), another example of reading IIRI-RA’s limitations on judicial authority narrowly.
Given the absence of any statutory prohibition on stays of periods of voluntary departure once granted, the analyses underlying our decisions in Andreiu and Ma-haraj support the conclusion that we retain such authority in cases in which we otherwise have jurisdiction.1 Andreiu *1177held that we retain jurisdiction to stay-removal orders under our ordinary equity powers, noting that to rule otherwise would mean, in asylum cases particularly, that “thousands ... who fled their native lands based on well-founded fears of persecution will be forced to return to that danger under the fiction that they will be safe while awaiting the slow wheels of American justice to grind to a halt.” 253 F.3d at 484 (quoting Andreiu v. Reno, 223 F.3d 1111, 1127-28 (9th Cir.2000) (Thomas, J., dissenting)). Andreiu emphasized the particular danger facing a stay applicant “if it appears that the country of origin will not freely permit a return to the United States upon a grant of asylum.” Id. Under such circumstances, a complete status quo injunction should include a stay of any period of voluntary departure granted. Otherwise, a petitioner who has an asylum claim sufficiently colorable to merit a stay of removal would not be restored to the status quo ante after this court’s decision on the merits of his or her case.
Without our equitable authority to stay the availability of voluntary departure periods, at the time an alien is granted voluntary departure he or she would be faced with having to leave forthwith to preserve the benefits of voluntary departure, risking nonreturn in spite of a potentially meritorious case. The asylum-seeker would have to weigh the dangers of abuse in and/or confinement to the country in which the alien was allegedly persecuted against the penalties attached to forfeiting a grant of voluntary departure: a considerable fine and a 10-year prohibition on “any further relief under this section and sections 240A, 245, 248, and 249.” 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(d).2 An alien’s departure in these circumstances could in effect void the asylum appeal, because the alien might not be able to return to the United States if he or she successfully petitioned for relief through judicial review. This result cannot, in my view, be squared with Andreiu.
Aside-from conflicting with Andreiu, the outcome would also be in considerable tension with Maharaj. Maharaj concerned this court’s authority to issue a stay of removal pending consideration of an appeal from a habeas petition challenging a removal order. As Maharaj notes, 28 U.S.C. § 2349(b), incorporated in the INA by 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(1), generally permits courts to issue stays preserving the status quo pending determination of petitions for judicial review of agency action. See Maharaj, 295 F.3d at 965. The authority to “suspend the operation of the order of the agency,” 28 U.S.C. § 2349(b), includes, in my view, the authority to enjoin the effective date of ancillary relief that is not itself under review.
Further, Maharaj assumed that there is no need for special authorization to grant stays pending proceedings in this court. The decision mentioned no such special authorization regarding habeas appeals generally, yet our traditional equitable authority to preserve our jurisdiction was held to permit such stays. See 295 F.3d at 966.
Maharaj also relied once more on the need to avoid absurd results, citing An-dreiu, and noted “the need for unsuccessful asylum applicants to avoid removal pending review of their claims.” Id. Again, the “need” for certain asylum applicants is not just to avoid removal in the abstract but to avoid going back to their countries of origin. If they do so, voluntarily or otherwise, as a practical matter *1178then- appeals may be futile, as they may suffer the very consequences in their homelands that they sought to avoid by applying for asylum in the United States.
Finally, the fact that IIRIRA’s language commits the voluntary departure decision to the executive branch does not limit our equitable authority to grant a stay of the voluntary departure period. The statutory language that discusses removal is just as unequivocal about executive primacy in making removal decisions, yet we stay these orders using our equitable authority all the time. See 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a) (“Any alien ... in and admitted to the United States shall, upon the order of the Attorney General, be. removed if the alien is within one or more of the following classes of deportable aliens.... ” (emphasis added)).
The conclusion compelled by the statute and our case law is that this court’s equitable power affirmatively to preserve the status quo pending review of a removal order — by granting a stay of both the removal order and the voluntary departure period until the alien’s underlying claim is adjudicated was not disturbed by IIRIRA. It is with this understanding that I concur in the opinion.

. The Andreiu analysis has been adopted by two other circuits. See Mohammed v. Reno, 309 F.3d 95, 99 (2d Cir.2002); Bejjani v. INS, 271 F.3d 670, 687-89 (6th Cir.2001). But see Weng v. U.S. Attorney General, 287 F.3d 1335, 1337-40 (11th Cir.2002) (disagreeing withArc-dreiu).

. Under the post-IIRIRA voluntary departure regime, a bond of at least $500 must be posted within five days of the IJ’s order. See 8 C.F.R. § 240.26(c)(3). The civil penalty for failure to depart during the period of voluntary departure is $1,000 to $5,000. See 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(d).