Court Opinion

ID: 9490644
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:50:06.915185+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:13.742096
License: Public Domain

RYMER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part:
I dissent from the majority’s unprecedented conclusion that there is reasonable cause for failure to appear when an alien has not received notice of the hearing (sent to her last known address) and the INS hasn’t told the alien to tell the INS when her address changes. This holding turns the alien’s statutory duty to notify the INS of a change of address upside down, 8 U.S.C. § 1305(a), and it is out of sync with our own precedent and that of other circuits. It depends, moreover, on an argument that Urbina has never made.
Urbina did not argue to the BIA that she missed her deportation hearing because the INS failed to explain her statutory duty to notify it of a change of address. Nor did she argue that she did not know that she was required to tell the INS when she moved. Rather, Urbina argued to the BIA that she had reasonable cause to miss her deportation hearing because she did not receive actual notice of her deportation hearing, and that “[e]ven if she did not advise the Service of her change of address, she was not in conscious violation of the deportation order, since she never received it.” It was to support this argument — not the one on which the majority opines — that Urbina submitted a declaration indicating that she “had no knowledge of the need to report nor of an actual report informing the government of our change of address.” Thus, the BIA had no obligation to address her statement except to consider it in connection with the issue that Urbina actually raised. That the BIA did. Evidence in the abstract does not preserve an issue for appeal, and we shouldn’t forage around the record to find one. In any event, Urbina’s petition for review in this court does not raise the issue that the majority decides, either; instead, her petition argues that there is no reasonable assurance that Urbina understood that she was in deportation proceedings in the absence of evidence showing that the Order to Show Cause was explained to her or that she was provided with a Spanish translation of it. There is no evidence that Urbina did not know she had been placed in deportation *1320proceedings and this issue likewise wasn’t presented to the BIA. We therefore lack jurisdiction to consider, or to remand for the BIA to determine, whether Urbina’s failure to notify the INS of her current address constitutes reasonable cause for not appearing. Rashtabadi v. INS, 23 F.3d 1562, 1567 (9th Cir.1994).
Even assuming that the issue wasn’t waived, it is incorrectly decided. The law is clear that an alien released from INS custody on her own recognizance has to keep the INS apprised of a change of address. As 8 U.S.C. § 1305(a) provides:
Each alien required to be registered under this subchapter who is within the United States shall notify the Attorney General in writing of each change of address and new address within ten days from the date of such change and furnish with such notice such additional information as the Attorney General may require by regulation.
See also 8 C.F.R. § 265.1 (same). There are no exceptions in the statute or regulations.
Although we have not previously addressed the precise issue the majority decides, we have held that “notice of a deportation hearing sent by regular mail to the last address provided by the alien to the INS satisfies the requirements of constitutional due process____” Farhoud v. INS, 114 F.3d 867, 869 (9th Cir.1997); and we and other circuits have also held that failure to receive notice of a deportation hearing does not excuse failure to appear when it is due to the alien’s failure to provide an address where she can receive mail. See Sequeircu-Solano v. INS, 104 F.3d 278, 279 (9th Cir.1997) (“This claim of improper notice fails because it was Sequeira-Solano’s responsibility to notify the INS of a change of counsel and concomitant change of address. The INS properly sent the required notice to the only address provided by Sequeira-Solano.”); see also Arrieta v. INS, 117 F.3d 429, 431 (9th Cir.1997) (“We conclude that the BIA’s ruling ... is correct that notice by certified mail sent to an alien’s last known address can be sufficient under the Act, even if no one signed for it.”); Fuentes-Argueta v. INS, 101 F.3d 867, 871 (2d Cir.1996) (presumption of adequate notice rebuttable only upon “substantial and probative evidence ... that nondelivery [of notice of hearing] was not due to the respondent’s failure to provide an address where he could receive mail”); United States v. Estrada-Trochez, 66 F.3d 733, 736 (5th Cir.1995) (“[T]he ultimate fault lies with the Appellant for his failure to comply with a law that is essential to the administration of the INS.”); Wijeratne v. INS, 961 F.2d 1344, 1347 (7th Cir.1992) (alien did not establish reasonable cause because failure to receive notice “was entirely her own fault”). The majority does not explain why the reasoning of these cases should not control here or why we should stray so far afield, on our own initiative, from the approach of our colleagues. Nor does the majority cite any authority for its holding that it could be reasonable for Urbina not to let the INS know that the Miami address she gave it in the first place for notice purposes was later changed to San Francisco.
I therefore dissent from Part I in that we lack jurisdiction to consider the issue, and I concur in the result of Part II.1 Even if we had jurisdiction, I do not see how Urbina can establish reasonable cause for missing her deportation hearing since the reason she did not receive actual notice was her own failure to give notice of a change of address. Regardless, it seems clear to me that this is precisely the kind of call that the BIA should make in the first instance, not us. See Hernandez-Vivas v. INS, 23 F.3d 1557, 1560 (citing Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-845, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2781-83, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984).)

. While I think the BIA implicitly considered the cumulative effects of hardship on Urbina, it did not do so explicitly. I have no quarrel with remanding to the BIA for this purpose only.