Abdulai v. Attorney Gen.
| Docket Number | 20-2305 |
| Decision Date | 10 August 2022 |
| Parties | RASHID ABDULAI, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL UNITED STATES OF AMERICA |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
NOT PRECEDENTIAL
Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) November 16 2021
On Petition for Review of a Final Administrative Removal Order of the Department of Homeland Security (Agency No A216-473-874) Immigration Judge: Alice Song Hartye
Before: AMBRO, JORDAN, and RENDELL, Circuit Judges
The Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") placed Rashid Abdulai in expedited removal proceedings, charging him with being removable as a person convicted of an aggravated felony. It eventually issued a Final Administrative Removal Order ("FARO"), and Abdulai filed a petition for review. He challenges the DHS's legal conclusion that his prior conviction for conspiracy to commit fraud was an aggravated felony, and he also asserts that the government's handling of his case violated his procedural due process rights. For the following reasons, we will dismiss the petition for review.
Abdulai is a native and citizen of Ghana who entered the United States in September 2013 with a non-immigrant visitor visa. He overstayed his visa's departure deadline. Years later, in November 2018, he was indicted in federal court in Tennessee for money laundering and for conspiring to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, and mail fraud. The indictment alleged that, in furtherance of a scheme to defraud businesses and individuals, Abdulai: received a check from one victim for approximately $15,000; received wire transfers from other victims and from co-conspirators in amounts totaling $48,000; and sent wire transfers to co-conspirators in amounts totaling $42,000. He pled guilty to the conspiracy charge; the money-laundering charge was dismissed.
A presentence investigation report added more details about Abdulai's involvement in the scheme. It concluded that the total loss amount attributable to his involvement was approximately $145,000, and a supplement to the report described how Abdulai impersonated a woman on Facebook in order to trick a man from Georgia into mailing Abdulai's wife a check for $51,000. Based on the presentence report and supplement, Abdulai was ordered to pay $51,000 in restitution and was sentenced to a prison term of twelve months and one day.
On March 10, 2020, DHS served Abdulai with a Notice of Intent to Issue a FARO. The Notice of Intent charged Abdulai with being deportable under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) because he was convicted of an aggravated felony, as defined in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(M) and (U). DHS issued the FARO on April 22, 2020, and it was served on Abdulai on May 26.
After receiving the FARO, Abdulai sought protection from removal, and, after consideration by an asylum officer and an immigration judge ("IJ"), Abdulai was scheduled for "withholding-only proceedings." Those proceedings went forward, and the IJ denied Abdulai's application in an order that was served on November 6, 2020. Abdulai did not appeal that denial to the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA"), so the IJ's ruling became final and unappealable on December 7, 2020. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.38(b).
Prior to the IJ's ruling in the withholding-only proceedings, Abdulai filed the pending petition for review of the FARO.
We begin by determining whether, under the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA"), we have jurisdiction over Abdulai's petition for review. There are three questions that present potential obstacles to jurisdiction: first, whether the FARO is a final order of removal; second, whether Abdulai exhausted his administrative remedies; and, finally, whether the aggravated-felony bar strips us of jurisdiction.
Under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a), we have appellate jurisdiction over final orders of removal only. "[A]n order is final for jurisdictional purposes when a removability determination has been made that is no longer appealable to the BIA, regardless [of] whether a formal order of removal has been entered." Yusupov v. Att'y Gen., 518 F.3d 185, 195 (3d Cir. 2008) (collecting cases). There are arguably two times we might count as making Abdulai's FARO "final" and thus challengeable under § 1252(a). First, we might say the FARO was final when issued, even though withholding-only proceedings stayed his removal. See Guerrero-Sanchez v. Warden York Cnty. Prison, 905 F.3d 208, 216 (3d Cir. 2018) (). The other option is to say that the FARO did not become final until the IJ denied Abdulai's application for relief and he declined to appeal to the BIA. If that is the time of finality, then Abdulai filed his petition for review in our Court prematurely because he filed before the IJ reached her decision. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.38(a).
We need not firmly determine at which of those two points the removal order became final because, under either option, we have jurisdiction. If it was when the FARO was issued, there was a final order of removal and Abdulai timely petitioned for review within 30 days of service. See Villegas de la Paz v. Holder, 640 F.3d 650, 653-55 (6th Cir. 2010).
And if it was when the withholding-only proceedings concluded, Abdulai's petition ripened when the IJ issued her decision and the thirty-day deadline for appealing that order, id. § 1003.38(b), came and went without any action by Abdulai. See Khan v. Att'y Gen., 691 F.3d 488, 494 (3d Cir. 2012) (). Thus, the final-order rule does not deprive us of jurisdiction.[1]
Next, we may review a final order only if the alien has "exhausted all administrative remedies available to the alien as of right[.]" 8 U.S.C. § 1252(d)(1). Abdulai did not timely respond to the Notice of Intent,[2] and this is the first proceeding in which he has challenged the determination that his conviction was an aggravated felony. We recently decided, however, that "the INA's exhaustion requirement does not deprive us of jurisdiction to consider [a petitioner's] legal challenge for the first time on his petition for review" of a final order of removability resulting from expedited removal proceedings. Barradas Jacome v. Att'y Gen., 39 F.4th 111, 116 (3d Cir. 2022). We reasoned that the applicable regulations, as well as DHS's practices, "strongly suggest" that legal challenges may not be raised during such proceedings. Id. at 118-21. Thus, the exhaustion-of-remedies rule does not deprive us of jurisdiction.
Lastly, § 1252 also limits our jurisdiction by prohibiting review of "any final order of removal against an alien who is removable by reason of having committed [an aggravated felony]." 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(C). But that jurisdictional-stripping provision applies only if the petitioner "is, in fact, an alien who has committed an aggravated felony." Singh v. Att'y Gen., 677 F.3d 503, 508 (3d Cir. 2012). We therefore may exercise jurisdiction over the predicate legal question of whether an offense is an aggravated felony. Id. Likewise, we retain jurisdiction to "examine constitutional claims or [other] questions of law." Fan Wang v. Att'y Gen., 898 F.3d 341, 343 (3d Cir. 2018) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
Abdulai raises two legal claims in his petition for review. First, he argues that the government wrongly determined that he had been convicted of an aggravated felony. Second, he argues that the government violated his right to procedural due process by delaying service of the FARO. Neither of those arguments is persuasive.
Under the INA, "[a]ny alien who is convicted of an aggravated felony at any time after admission is deportable." 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). The INA defines an "aggravated felony" as, among other things, "an offense that [] involves fraud or deceit in which the loss to the victim or victims exceeds $10,000[,]" or "an attempt or conspiracy to commit [such] an offense[.]" Id. § 1101(a)(43)(M)(i), (U). Abdulai does not meaningfully dispute that the crime of which he was convicted, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud, is an offense that involves fraud or deceit.[4]Instead, he argues that his offense did not involve a loss to victims exceeding $10,000.
When determining whether an alien's offense caused over $10,000 in losses, we look to "the specific circumstances surrounding an offender's commission of a fraud and deceit crime on a specific occasion." Nijhawan v. Holder, 557 U.S. 29, 40 (2009). To do so, we review "the indictment, judgment, presentence investigation report, and any other 'sentencing-related material' that sheds light on [the alien's] conduct." Rad v. Att'y Gen., 983 F.3d 651, 659 (3d Cir. 2020) (quoting Nijhawan, 557 U.S. at 42). A conspiracy to commit fraud or deceit satisfies the dollar threshold as long as the conspiracy intended to cause over $10,000 in losses, even if the conspiracy resulted in no actual losses. Id. at 670. Still, the loss must be "tethered" to the actual "offense of conviction," and not to "acquitted or dismissed counts or general conduct." Singh, 677 F.3d at 508 (quoting Nijhawan, 557 U.S. at 42).
The relevant materials plainly show that...
To continue reading
Request your trial