Court Opinion

ID: 9843078
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:26:04.784096+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:27.468657
License: Public Domain

CUMMINGS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Miguel Leal-Rodriguez is a legal resident alien who has lived in this country for twenty-two years. His wife and two daughters are U.S. citizens. In 1983, he travelled briefly to Mexico to visit an ailing grandfather after obtaining express written permission from his probation officer and a federal district judge. When the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) refused to allow him back into the United States, he crossed the border illegally because his daughter was in the hospital, and he believed the permission of his probation officer would resolve his problems with the INS once he returned to the United States. Against the obvious import of these facts, the majority today concludes that Leal intended to interrupt his status as a lawful resident alien and therefore that he is not entitled to equitable relief from deportation offered by Rosenburg v. Fleuti, 374 U.S. 449, 83 S.Ct. 1804, and § 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(c). Equity and common sense counsel rejecting the majority’s result, and because their opinion also disturbs the well-settled logic of precedents following Fleuti, I respectfully dissent.
The dispositive question in this case is whether when Leal returned to the United States by crossing the border illegally, he made a statutory “entry” under the immigration laws as defined by § 1101(a)(13) and interpreted by Fleuti, 374 U.S. 449, 83 S.Ct. 1804. As the majority points out, we defer to the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) interpretation of § 1101(a)(13) if it is reasonable. Zalega v. INS, 916 F.2d 1257, *9531259 (7th Cir.1990); Variamparambil v. INS, 831 F.2d 1362, 1366 (7th Cir.1987). For reasons set forth below, I would hold that Fleuti applies to Leal’s trip and that the BIA’s application of § 1101(a)(13) to Leal was unreasonable.
I agree with the majority’s statement in Part 11(A) of the opinion that “returns to this country will not count as ‘entries’ [under immigration law] if they follow foreign excursions that are ‘innocent, casual and brief.’ ” Parts 11(B) and 11(C) of the opinion are more problematic. In Part 11(B), the majority endorses the BIA’s conclusion that under Palatian v. INS, 502 F.2d 1091 (9th Cir.1974), Cuevas-Cuevas v. INS, 523 F.2d 883 (9th Cir.1975), and Matter of Kolk, 111 & N Dec. 103 (BIA 1965), Fleuti should not apply to Leal’s trip. In my view, Part 11(B) is flawed because it ignores cases holding that Fleuti covered trips no less “innocent, casual and brief” than Leal’s. In Part 11(C), the majority concludes that we need not conduct a Fleu-ti analysis in this case because Fleuti does not apply to those immigration laws proscribing entry without inspection.1 This also seems incorrect. Fleuti governs all immigration law on entries because it interprets the definition of “entry." I submit that Parts 11(B) and 11(C) of the majority’s opinion distort and rigidify Fleuti, undermining its authority as a precedent.
The majority is able to assert that Fleuti does not apply to entry without inspection only because it treats Fleuti as a court-created equitable doctrine. Fleuti is no such thing — it interprets a statute, and that interpretation binds this Court whether we like it or not. Returning to that statute for a moment, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(13) defines an “entry” as “any coming of an alien into the United States” (emphasis added). It qualifies this statement:
[A]n alien having a lawful permanent residence in the United States shall not be regarded as making an entry into the United States for purposes of the immigration laws if the alien proves to the satisfaction of the Attorney General that his departure to a foreign port or place or to an outlying possession was not intended * * *.
This Court has noted before that passive constructions can leave a statute subject to varying interpretations. Sherman v. Community Consolidated School District 21 of Wheeling Township, 980 F.2d 437, 442 (7th Cir.1992). Such is the case with § 1101(a)(13). That a - “departure * * * was not intended” could mean simply that the alien left the country against his or her will — by falling asleep in a train, for example. .Or the text could mean that an alien would not be regarded as making a statutory entry if he did not intend to depart from the United States in any permanent sense. In other words, the text could mean that resident aliens could make short trips abroad without fear of exclusion on their return. Fleuti expressly adopted this more permissive reading of § 1101(a)(13).
Section 1101(a)(13) is part of a “definitions” section that precedes the substantive provisions of the immigration laws. When definitions of a word appear in such a section, they apply wherever that particular word is used in the statute. For example, Title VII defines “employee” at 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-(f) in a definitions section that precedes all Title VII’s substantive provisions. No court would find that this definition of “employee” applied to some substantive rules in Title VII but not to others. The majority’s conclusion in Part 11(C) that Fleuti never applies to entry without inspection is therefore baffling. The question of whether an “entry” occurred must be answered before considering whether that entry violated our admittedly important laws against entry without inspection.
I believe that the majority also errs in Part 11(B), where it endorses the BIA’s conclusion that Leal’s trip is not “innocent, casual and brief” when analyzed under Fleuti. Part 11(B) begins by deferring to Matter of Kolk, 11 I & N Dec. 103 (BIA *9541965), as a binding expression of the BIA’s view that entry without inspection always interrupts an alien’s permanent residence under Fleuti. Cases in this and other circuits have not focused on any one factor to determine whether a trip is innocent under Fleuti, so that it can be argued that such cases overrule Kolk sub silentio. Lozano-Giron v. INS, 506 F.2d 1073 (7th Cir.1974); Yanez-Jacquez v. INS, 440 F.2d 701 (5th Cir.1971). We need not proceed this far to decide that Kolk does not bind this Court, however. A recent BIA decision concluded that “entry without inspection is no longer the type of unlawful conduct that would necessarily render an absence not innocent and therefore ‘meaningful’.” Matter of Romero, No. A30-773-096 (BIA December 19, 1990). The majority states that by declining to publish Romero as a precedent decision the BIA showed that it still subscribes to Kolk. This is backwards. By utterly ignoring Kolk, Romero proves that the BIA no longer treats Kolk as binding. Even if Kolk is still the BIA’s “official” position, this Court is not bound by Kolk because the BIA was not bound by Kolk in Romero. It escapes me why this Court should be more deferential to Kolk than the BIA itself, especially when the methods of our cases after Kolk cast doubt on its conclusion. The analysis that follows explains why I disagree with Part 11(B) of today’s opinion, why Kolk is bad law, and why Leal’s trip satisfies Fleuti’s standards.
Fleuti reviewed the application of § 1101(a)(13) to a legal resident alien who went to Mexico for a few hours. As the majority explains, the INS tried to deport Fleuti because he was excludable as a homosexual when he returned to the United States from Mexico. The Supreme Court concluded that his brief trip to Mexico was not an “intended departure” under § 1101(a)(13). Id. 374 U.S. at 463, 83 S.Ct. at 1812. Fleuti obviously had not been dragged over the border to Mexico against his will. What the Supreme Court meant, and what appellate courts for twenty years have understood Fleuti to mean, is that under § 1101(a)(13), long-term resident aliens may make short trips abroad without being subjected to the consequences of an “entry” on their return as long as their actions do not “meaningfully interrupt]” their status as lawful resident aliens. Id. Fleuti held that “innocent, casual and brief” trips like Leal’s do not force aliens to make a statutory “entry” on their return.
If Leal's trip is as “innocent, casual and brief” as trips in earlier cases where Fleuti applied, Fleuti applies here. If Leal’s trip resembles cases where Fleuti did not apply, Fleuti does not apply here. The majority avoids this simple analysis, concluding instead that Fleuti only applies where an alien had no notice prior to travel that he might be excludable upon his return. For the majority, an illegal entry, no matter what its surrounding context, bars Fleuti’s application to a trip where that entry occurred. No court has held this before, and nothing about Leal’s case suggests a need for such constricting innovation.
Yanez-Jacquez v. INS, 440 F.2d 701 (5th Cir.1971), rebuts the majority’s suggestion that a single illegal entry means that a trip can no longer be “innocent, casual and brief” under Fleuti. Yanez crossed the Mexican border with an ice pick for the dubious purpose of seeking revenge on a thief, and he did not return to the United States via an INS check point. The INS argued that Yanez's action showed an intent contrary to the policy of U.S. immigration law. Id. at 704. The court ignored the fact that Yanez re-entered the United States by wading the Rio Grande instead of passing the INS’s inspection point at the Santa Fe bridge, and focused instead on the ice pick and the purpose of Yanez’s trip.' The court wrote:
We agree petitioner’s purpose was less than salutary in nature. We disagree, however, that this one factor [i.e. crossing the border with the ice pick] is controlling'. We think that application of the other factors outlined in Fleuti point[s] markedly to a conclusion that the petitioner did not intend by the trip to Juarez to interrupt his status as a resident alien.
*955Id. (emphasis added). The same is true of Leal’s trip to Mexico. One adverse factor, his crossing the border between inspection points, does not control the resolution of his case. Leal’s act is more excusable than Yanez’s because Leal was driven by a legitimate desire to return home to his hospitalized daughter.
Leal’s situation is also close to the facts of Zimmerman v. Lehman, 339 F.2d 943 (7th Cir.1965), which applied Fleuti to an alien who went to Canada on a brief trip and claimed to be a United States citizen when he was stopped at the border on his return. He was not a citizen — but his wife was, his three children were, and he claimed to believe that after thirty-five years in the United States, he was too. The INS tried to deport him for “attempt[ing] to enter the United States without a visa * * Id. at 944-945. This Court would not allow it:
[Zimmerman] was married to an American citizen, had three minor children who were born in this country, all dependent upon him for support, and had a residence and business in Chicago. From the fact that he took his family on an innocent, harmless vacation trip to Canada, it would border on the absurd to ascribe to him an intention of impairing his status as a permanent resident of this country.
Id. at 948-949. Leal, like Zimmerman, had a good faith reason to believe he could return to the United States. His river crossing at the border should not by itself erase the otherwise innocent character of his entire trip.
The majority cites two Ninth Circuit cases, Cuevas-Cuevas v. INS, 523 F.2d 883 (9th Cir.1975), and Palatian v. INS, 502 F.2d 1091 (9th Cir.1974), for the proposition that Leal’s illegal entry bars Fleuti from applying to his trip. The alien in Palatian was caught at the border with fifty-five pounds of marijuana. Id. at 1091-1092. Palatian held that Fleuti did not apply because the alien was “ ‘attempting to accomplish some object which is itself contrary to some policy reflected in our immigration laws.’ ” Id. at 1093, quoting Fleuti, 374 U.S. at 462, 83 S.Ct. at 1812. It is absurd to suggest that Leal resembles the alien in Palatian, who tried to smuggle huge quantities of drugs across the border. The alien in Cuevas-Cuevas was caught guiding other illegal aliens across the border for a fee. Both cases thus are different from Leal’s in that they involve illegal action apart from the entry itself.
Fleuti offered several factors beyond the words “innocent, casual and brief” to help courts determine whether an alien’s trip interrupted his resident status, and Leal’s trip satisfies this more detailed Fleuti scrutiny as well. First we must consider the duration of Leal’s trip abroad. The trip in Fleuti lasted a few hours, while Lozano-Giron v. INS, 506 F.2d 1073 (7th Cir.1974), declined to apply Fleuti to a month-long trip. Zimmerman, 339 F.2d 943, held that a two-week trip like Leal’s was sufficiently “brief” to be covered under Fleuti.
A second factor stressed by Fleuti is whether an alien needs travel documents to go abroad. The INS argues that because Leal needed permission from the district court and his probation officer to travel, Fleuti does not apply to Leal’s trip. Recall Fleuti’s exact words on this point, however, and the INS’s argument supports the opposite position: “Still another [factor to be considered] is whether the alien has to procure any travel documents in order to make his trip, since the need to obtain such items might well cause the alien to consider more fully the implications involved in his leaving the county.” 374 U.S. at 462, 83 S.Ct. at 1812 (emphasis added). The proper question is whether Leal’s need for permission from his probation officer should have alerted him to the “implications” of leaving the country. The answer: of course not. Because Leal was on probation, he could not have travelled at all without permission.
The majority argues that Leal would have needed permission to travel “anywhere” and therefore he could not assume that a letter from his probation officer would resolve any immigration problems raised by his trip to Mexico. This defies common sense. Although we do not know *956the letter’s contents, it seems likely that the permission Leal sought and obtained from his probation officer involved travel to Mexico. Leal would hardly know that federal judges cannot grant immigrants permission to cross international borders. Most people, aliens or no, would take it on faith that when, as here, a federal judge gives you permission to travel out of the country, you may dó so. There is no reason to question Leal’s good faith belief that the letter allowed him to travel freely to Mexico and back.
A third and crucial factor under Fleuti is whether the alien’s, actions over the course of his entire trip show an intent to remain a lawful, permanent U.S. resident. Leal’s actions do. When Leal took the letter from his probation officer with him on his trip; he showed his intent to return to his family and abide by the laws of the United States. He further assumed the letter would clear' the difficulties he encountered at the border. His one illegal act — entry without inspection — must be viewed in the context of his entire trip. The majority appears to assume Leal’s trip ended when he waded the Rio Grande, but it did not. When he returned home, he contacted a lawyer who notified the INS that Leal was no longer in Mexico. Leal did not vanish from the INS’s jurisdiction. After hurrying to the bedside of his hospitalized daughter, he submitted himself to the INS’s authority and tried to resolve his immigration status. Taken together, the facts of Leal’s trip— permission from his probation officer and a district judge to travel to Mexico and back, a hospitalized daughter, submission to the INS in Chicago — suggest that he did not have an illegal aim or intent when he crossed the border without inspection.
Lozano-Giron v. INS, 506 F.2d 1073 (7th Cir.1974), supports this analysis of Leal’s intent. There we reviewed several Fleuti factors to conclude that Lozano made an entry under § 1101(a)(13). Lozano had left the country three times, from one to three months each time, the last time to marry. Marriage abroad suggested to this Court that Lozano did not plan to return, and therefore that he meaningfully interrupted his status as a lawful resident alien. We thus considered Lozano’s ties to the United States as part of our Fleuti analysis. Leal’s family ties here argue powerfully that he intended to retain his resident alien status. Only one aspect of his trip, the border crossing, even suggests the contrary.
The majority apparently reads this dissent to argue that an alien’s subjective intent controls whether a trip is innocent under Fleuti. I argue no such thing. The issue under Fleuti is whether a court can find that an alien’s actions meaningfully interrupted his or her resident alien status in the context of an entire trip. This Court’s analysis in Zimmerman and Loza-no-Giron shows that an alien’s subjective intent is an important but not determinative element of a court’s objective analysis of the alien’s entire trip.
In summary, three points underscore the conclusion that Fleuti should apply to Leal’s trip. First, Leal had permission from his probation officer and a district court to travel. It would be grossly unjust if Leal lost an equitable hearing on his deportation because he thought this permission would allow him to resolve his immigration problems here instead of in Mexico. Second, Leal did not attempt to avoid the INS’s jurisdiction by crossing the border illegally. When he returned home, he immediately contacted the INS to resolve his immigration status. Aliens who “enter without inspection” usually do so to avoid the INS, and strict regulation of illegal entries aims to punish those who attempt to evade the INS, not those who submit to the INS. Finally, a decision in Leal’s favor would not reward illegal entry. If Leal had waited in Mexico as the INS ordered, he could have applied for § 212(c) relief from exclusion. Thus if the majority held that Leal’s trip was innocent under Fleuti, he would only regain the chance to apply for § 212(c) relief, and the INS would still be able to argue that he should be deported for a thirteen-year-old drug conviction.
A holding in Leal’s favor would not legalize entry without inspection, as the majority seems to fear. If facts similar to Leal’s trip were not present in a future case, a *957court following a decision in Leal’s favor would not be compelled to find that an illegal entry was innocent. Accordingly, I dissent because Leal’s actions show that he did not intend meaningfully to interrupt his status as a legal resident alien, and therefore he did not make a statutory entry. I would vacate the order of deportation based on entry without inspection and remand Leal’s case for a § 212(c) hearing to review the equities of deporting him for his prior drug conviction.

. Part III concludes that Leal is not entitled to a § 212(c) waiver for entry without inspection. My analysis would not reach this question. Therefore there is no need to discuss that portion of the majority's opinion.