Court Opinion

ID: 9497995
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:05:23.841107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:32.944662
License: Public Domain

BERZON, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with every sentence of the majority opinion except the penultimate one. The statutory structure is peculiar, as it allows judicial review of the Legalization Appeals Unit’s (LAU) legalization decision only on petition for review from a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals *1081(BIA). See 8 U.S.C. § 1255a(f)(4)(A) (“There shall be judicial review of such a denial only in the judicial review of an order of deportation.... ”). As the caption of the majority opinion indicates, this is such a petition for review. I therefore have a hard time seeing how we can “remand” to the LAU, as the case did not come to us from the LAU. Nor can we remand to the BIA with instructions to remand to the LAU, for the former body has no authority over the latter. See, e.g., In re Singh, 21 I. & N. Dec. 427, 428 (BIA 1996).
I would simply decide that Guzman-Andrade’s legalization application was erroneously denied, and that further proceedings before the LAU are therefore warranted. In other words, I would grant Guzman-Andrade’s petition for review and allow him to go back to the LAU (or its successor), which, as the majority concludes, will be obligated to grant his application absent some substantive reason for rejection that has not yet surfaced.