Court Opinion

ID: 9498868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:29:57.984368+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:06.988974
License: Public Domain

RAGGI,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Jermi Francisco Lopez appeals his conviction for illegal reentry after deportation, see 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) and (b)(2), on the ground that the district court erroneously denied him the opportunity to challenge the underlying deportation order. The law expressly prohibits such challenges in the context of criminal reentry prosecutions unless the alien defendant satisfies three statutory conditions. He must demonstrate that
(1) the alien exhausted any administrative remedies that may have been available to seek relief against the order;
(2) the deportation proceedings at which the order was issued improperly deprived the alien of the opportunity for judicial review; and
(3) the entry of the order was fundamentally unfair.
8 U.S.C. § 1326(d).
Lopez submits that the district court erred in concluding that he failed to satisfy the second of these mandates. He asserts that he carried this burden by showing that the IJ and the BIA each failed to inform him of the availability of judicial review through a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. I join my colleagues in the majority in concluding that the lack of specific notice to Lopez as to the availability of habeas review did not constitute a defect in his administrative proceedings that deprived him of judicial review. See ante at 95 - 96. I cannot, however, join in their conclusion that such a deprivation of judicial review was practically effected by IJ and BIA errors in telling Lopez that he was ineligible for discretionary relief from deportation under former INA § 212(c), see 8 U.S.C. § 1182(c). See ante at 96-100. To the extent the majority reads United States v. Copeland, 376 F.3d 61 (2d Cir.2004), to compel this conclusion, I must respectfully dissent.
In Copeland, this court reiterated that “[t]he availability of habeas review is *102sometimes deemed to constitute an opportunity for judicial review.” United States v. Copeland, 376 F.3d at 68 (citing United States v. Gonzalez-Roque, 301 F.3d 39, 49-50 (2d Cir.2002) (holding alien not denied judicial review because habeas was available)). At the same time, however, the court instructed that the “technical availability” of habeas review does not necessarily foreclose a defendant from satisfying § 1326(d)(2). Id. at 69. It explained that, even “where habeas review is technically available, judicial review will be deemed to have been denied if resort to a habeas proceeding was not realistically possible.” Id. Copeland identified two circumstances that could demonstrate the realistic impossibility necessary to satisfy § 1326(d)(2): (1) lack of adequate time to pursue habeas review, and (2) “legal uncertainties” as to the availability of such review. Id. In my view, this case presents neither circumstance.1
With respect to the first, Copeland observed that deportation proceedings effectively deprived an alien of judicial review “where the interval between entry of the final deportation order and the physical deportation is too brief to afford a realistic possibility of filing a habeas petition.” Id. In making this point, Copeland distinguished the two-day interval between the deportation order and physical deportation in United States v. Mendoza-Lopez, 481 U.S. 828, 830, 107 S.Ct. 2148, 95 L.Ed.2d 772 (1987), from the ten-month interval between the final agency action and deportation in United States v. Gonzalez-Roque, 301 F.3d at 44. See United States v. Copeland 376 F.3d at 68. Following this precedent, this court has held one-month intervals between the entry of a final deportation order and deportation too brief a period to afford a realistic possibility of filing a habeas petition. See United States v. Calderon, 391 F.3d 370, 376 (2d Cir.2004); United States v. Sosa, 387 F.3d 131, 138 (2d Cir.2004). Defendants in such circumstances have been found to satisfy § 1326(d)(2).
Clearly, the chronology of this case is not analogous to Mendoza-Lopez, Calderon, and Sosa. After the October 31, 1997 dismissal of his BIA appeal, Lopez remained in the United States for twenty months before being deported on June 28, 1999. The majority nevertheless concludes that Lopez was denied the opportunity for judicial review throughout this period because of misinformation communicated by the IJ and BIA regarding Lopez’s eligibility for § 212(c) relief. See ante at 99. (“While the interval of time in which it is realistically possible for an alien to seek judicial review may be quite short where the alien has not received misinformation, the analysis differs where the government affirmatively misleads an alien about the availability of relief.”). It concludes that such misinformation functions as a sufficiently “powerful deterrent” to an alien seeking judicial relief for us to equate it to the denial of such review for purposes of § 1326(d)(2). Ante at 98. The majority further observes that, in Copeland, this court “did not find Copeland’s two-year delay in seeking to exhaust his administrative remedies unreasonable where he had been misinformed by the IJ” as to the availability of § 212(c) relief. Ante at 99 - 100. It holds that “[t]his reasoning is equally applicable to Lopez’s failure to seek judicial review.” Ante at 99. I disagree.
*103Copeland presented an unusual fact situation that prompted the court to recognize “legal uncertainties as to the availability of habeas review” before deportation as a circumstance that, like lack of adequate time, could render a habeas petition realistically impossible. United States v. Copeland, 376 F.3d at 69. In Copeland, an alien who was misinformed as to his ineligibility for § 212(c) relief then waived his right to administrative appeal of his deportation order. See id. at 64. As a result of this waiver, Copeland was caught between a procedural rock and a hard place in pursuing judicial review via habeas. On the one hand, if Copeland filed a habeas petition asserting his right to § 212(c) consideration, he faced a likely administrative exhaustion challenge. See id. at 69; see also Theodoropoulos v. INS, 358 F.3d 162, 171 (2d Cir.2004). On the other hand, if he tried to cure his exhaustion failure by filing a motion to reopen his administrative proceedings, he could (and did) find himself deported before he could avail himself of habeas review. See United States v. Copeland, 376 F.3d at 69-70; see also Swaby v. Ashcroft, 357 F.3d 156, 160 n. 8 (2d Cir.2004) (recognizing that habeas petitions filed by aliens subject to INA § 106 may be mooted by deportation). The court recognized that Copeland might have filed a habeas petition challenging his administrative appeal waiver as uninformed and involuntary. See United States v. Copeland, 376 F.3d at 70. Nevertheless, it concluded that he could not be faulted for first proceeding administratively: “Given the [exhaustion] dilemma created by the IJ’s error and the clear congressional preference for administrative exhaustion reflected in Section 1326(d)(1), we hold that Copeland’s resort to administrative remedies was not unreasonable .... ” Id. The court reasoned that there were sufficient “legal uncertainties as to the availability of habeas review” to support the conclusion that deporting Copeland before he exhausted his administrative challenge satisfied § 1326(d)(2). Id. at 69. Nowhere did the court indicate that it would have excused Copeland’s two-year failure to pursue a habeas petition in the absence of legal uncertainties as to the availability of such relief, or in the absence of a pending “reasonable” administrative challenge that, once exhausted, would permit habeas review. Rather, because Copeland was deported before these administrative proceedings were concluded, the court held that he was effectively deprived of habeas review on the dual grounds of “lack of time” and “legal uncertainties” as to habeas availability. Id.
Like Copeland, Lopez was misinformed as to his eligibility for discretionary § 212(c) relief. Otherwise, however, Lopez’s case is distinguishable from Copeland’s in important respects that prevent me from concluding that Lopez satisfies § 1326(d)(2). Notably, the IJ’s § 212(c) error did not prompt Lopez to waive any rights to review of his deportation order. Indeed, Lopez specifically appealed the IJ’s § 212(c) ineligibility determination to the BIA. Precisely because Lopez thus satisfactorily exhausted administrative review of this claim, in his case, unlike Copeland, there were no “legal uncertainties as to the availability of habeas relief’ persisting throughout the twenty months before his deportation. United States v. Copeland, 376 F.3d at 69. The only uncertainties pertained to the merits of his § 212(c) argument, not the availability of habeas review.
In drawing this distinction, I do not excuse the IJ or BIA errors in this case or ignore the fact that “Us have special responsibilities toward aliens in deportation proceedings.” Id. at 73; see ante at 99. But we do not lightly assume the deprivation of judicial review in circumstances *104where the courts would undoubtedly have entertained a habeas corpus petition. See United States v. Gonzalez-Roque, 301 F.3d at 49-50. Copeland does not hold that agency misinformation as to an alien’s eligibility for § 212(c) relief, by itself, equates to a deprivation of judicial review on such a claim. Such a conclusion was warranted in Copeland only because the misinformation was closely followed by an administrative appeal waiver that gave rise to legal uncertainties as to the availability of habeas review. But no such conclusion is warranted in Lopez’s case where the § 212(c) misinformation did not deter him from pursuing the § 212(c) issue on administrative appeal and where he had twenty months to file a habeas petition for judicial review.
To be sure, the law regarding the availability of habeas review for aliens in Lopez’s situation was unsettled at the time of his 1997 deportation order. Such uncertainty, however, “does not mean that the remedy was unavailable.” United States v. Gonzalez-Roque, 301 F.3d at 50. As Gonzalez-Roque observed, even though, as of 1997, neither this court nor the Supreme Court had yet specifically ruled that IIRIRA did not foreclose habeas relief, the Constitution strictly limited suspension of the writ of habeas corpus to circumstances not at issue in IIRIRA, see id. (citing U.S. Const, art. I, § 9, cl. 2), and “nothing in the text of IIRIRA suggests that Congress repealed § 2241 or limited its scope,” id. In fact, a number of aliens facing deportation did pursue habeas petitions in the district courts of this circuit even before we clarified the right to do so in Jean-Baptiste v. Reno, 144 F.3d 212, 219 (2d Cir.1998). See United States v. Gonzalez-Roque, 301 F.3d at 50 (collecting district court habeas cases). Of particular relevance, habeas petitions were successfully litigated in this circuit by deportable aliens who, like Lopez, were misinformed by the IJ and BIA that they were ineligible for § 212(c) relief. See, e.g., Mojica v. Reno, 970 F.Supp. 130, 140, 142, 178-79 (E.D.N.Y.1997) (concluding that AEDPA restrictions on § 212(c) relief are not retroactive), aff'd in part, dismissed in part sub nom., Henderson v. INS, 157 F.3d 106 (2d Cir.1998).
In any event, whatever uncertainty there may have been regarding the availability of habeas relief in 1997 at the time Lopez’s deportation order became final, it was resolved by our ruling in Jean-Baptiste in May 1998. This was a full year before Lopez’s June 1999 deportation. In light of Lopez’s demonstrated awareness that he could administratively appeal his eligibility for § 212(c) relief, I cannot conclude that, after Jean-Baptiste, it was “not realistically possible” for him to pursue a similar habeas corpus challenge simply because the BIA reiterated the IJ’s ineligibility error.
In sum, because Lopez had twenty months to pursue habeas review of his deportation order and because there were no legal uncertainties — certainly not for the year after May 1998 — as to the availability of such judicial review for aliens in Lopez’s situation, I cannot agree with my colleagues in the majority that Copeland requires us to hold that Lopez satisfies § 1326(d)(2) simply because he was twice misinformed as to his eligibility for § 212(c) relief. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to vacate the judgment of conviction and to remand this case for further consideration of § 1326(d)(3). Instead, I vote to affirm Lopez’s conviction for unlawful reentry.

. It is unnecessary here to explore the possibility that other circumstances might also demonstrate the realistic impossibility of pursuing technically available habeas relief because I do not understand the majority to view Lopez’s case as requiring any expansion of Copeland's reasoning. See ante at 98, 99 - 100.