Ramos v. Ashcroft, 03-4050.

• Decision Date: 15 June 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-4050.,03-4050.
• Citation: 371 F.3d 948
• Parties: Miguel Angel RAMOS, Petitioner, v. John ASHCROFT, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

371 F.3d 948

Miguel Angel RAMOS, Petitioner, v. John ASHCROFT, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent.

No. 03-4050.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Submitted May 25, 2004.

Decided June 15, 2004.

Christopher Keleher (submitted), Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner.

George P. Katsivalis, Department of Homeland Security, Office of the District Counsel, Chicago, IL, Keith I. Bernstein, Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Before EASTERBROOK, ROVNER, and EVANS, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge.

What is the location of a proceeding conducted in two places at once? Immigration officials, who propose to remove Miguel Angel Ramos from the United States, offered him a hearing in Council Bluffs, Iowa. There Ramos, his lawyer, his witnesses, and the lawyer for the government testified and argued in front of a television set, connected by teleconference equipment to the chambers of an immigration judge in Chicago, Illinois. At the end of a hearing the immigration judge read a decision into the record; a formal order bore the caption:

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW IMMIGRATION COURT

Chicago, Illinois

The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed Ramos's appeal; its order begins: "File: A77-862-762 — Chicago". Ramos filed his petition for review in this circuit. The Department of Justice now asks us to transfer the proceeding to the eighth circuit, relying on 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(2), which says in part: "The petition for review shall be filed with the court of appeals for the judicial circuit in which the immigration judge completed the proceedings." According to the Department, a proceeding is "completed" where the lawyers and witnesses appear for the hearing, rather than where the court is located and the order is issued.

Teleconferencing is increasingly common, so we were surprised to discover that no court has addressed the question where a proceeding is "completed" for purposes of § 1252(b)(2). There is enough ambiguity in the phrase, and enough potential for recurrence, that immigration officials would be well advised to issue regulations specifying where they think immigration proceedings are "completed." But there is no such regulation on the books. The statute itself asks, not where the lawyers, witnesses, or litigants played their parts, but where "the immigration judge completed the proceedings." The immigration judge completed his role in Chicago — something that would have been true even had this been a three-cornered teleconference (with the IJ participating from, say, a vacation home in Michigan). The immigration court's home office is where all parties were required to file their motions and briefs, see 8 C.F.R. § 1003.31(a), where the orders were prepared and entered, and where Ramos now prefers to litigate. It would be impossible to justify balking him in this respect, just because the IJ could be seen live on TV in Iowa. Federal judges often conduct hearings by teleconference between the court and a prison, so that prisoners need not be transported (with attendant cost and escape risks). That does not mean that an appeal would lie to the circuit in which the prison is located. Just so with § 1252(b)(2).

Doubtless there is a sense in which proceedings were "completed" in Iowa as well as in Illinois, for nothing would have happened had the immigration judge not transmitted a ruling to the parties assembled there. Maybe regulations could deem the proceedings completed in both places. Such regulations — or a revision to the statute — would distribute...