Reynoso v. Holder
| Decision Date | 26 March 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 11–2136.,11–2136. |
| Citation | 711 F.3d 199 |
| Parties | Beltsy REYNOSO, Petitioner, v. Eric H. HOLDER, Jr., Attorney General, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Ondine G. Sniffin on brief for petitioner.
Jesse Lloyd Busen, Trial Attorney, United States Department of Justice, Office of Immigration Litigation, Stuart F. Delery, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, and Erica B. Miles, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, on brief for respondent.
Before TORRUELLA, RIPPLE * and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.
Beltsy Reynoso, a native and citizen of the Dominican Republic, was granted conditional permanent residency in the United States in 2002 on the basis of her marriage to a United States citizen. Sometime following that grant, Ms. Reynoso and her husband began divorce proceedings. When she later sought to remove the conditions on her residency, she filed her application without her husband co-signing the relevant form. Although his signature would have been necessary in the ordinary course, Ms. Reynoso sought to employ an alternate method in which she was required to prove that the marriage, although now ended, had been bona fide. The Department of Homeland Security (“Department” or “DHS”) 1 denied her petition upon concluding that she had not carried her burden of establishing that she had entered her marriage for reasons other than obtaining immigration status in the United States. It therefore terminated her conditional resident status and initiated removal proceedings against her.
In removal proceedings, Ms. Reynoso renewed her request to remove the conditions on her residency and also sought cancellation of removal. The immigration judge (“IJ”) found that Ms. Reynoso had not established that she had entered her marriage in good faith and denied the request for removal of conditions. The IJ further determined that Ms. Reynoso was ineligible for cancellation of removal because she had given false testimony in the proceedings and therefore could not establish the requisite good moral character. Consequently, the IJ ordered Ms. Reynoso's removal, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA” or “Board”) dismissed her appeal.2 Ms. Reynoso now petitions this court for review of the decision of the Board. 3 Because the administrative record does not require the conclusion that Ms. Reynoso entered her marriage in good faith and because the Board did not commit legal error in denying her request for cancellation of removal, we deny the petition for review.
Ms. Reynoso married Lemuel Martínez on January 20, 2001. On March 7, 2001, Martínez filed a Form I–130 petition on Ms. Reynoso's behalf based on their marriage, and the Department approved the petition in July 2001. Ms. Reynoso subsequently filed an application to adjust her status to that of a permanent resident, which the Department approved on February 4, 2002. Because Ms. Reynoso's marriage was less than twenty-four months old on the date on which her residency application was approved, the approval was conditional.4
In November 2003, Ms. Reynoso submitted her first petition to remove the conditions on her permanent residency and requested that the Department waive the requirement that her husband co-sign the petition (“the joint filing requirement”); 5 she sought the waiver on the ground that she and Martínez had begun divorce proceedings.6 DHS denied the waiver petition in August 2004 because Ms. Reynoso had failed to provide sufficient documentary evidence of her marital relationship. In September 2004, Ms. Reynoso filed a second petition, which was denied in March 2005, because her divorce had not been finalized at the time that she filed her petition. 7
Ms. Reynoso filed a third petition requesting a waiver of the joint filing requirement in April 2005, and she was interviewed in connection with that petition in October 2006. In that interview, Ms. Reynoso stated, consistent with a written statement that she had provided in connection with the petition, that she had married Martínez in good faith on January 20, 2001, and that the couple had separated in October 2002. She also stated that she gave birth to a child in August 2003, while the couple was still married but separated, and that Martínez was not the child's father.
In support of her claim that the marriage to Martínez had been entered in good faith, Ms. Reynoso submitted the following documentation: a letter from a bank dated September 10, 2004, indicating that she and Martínez had held a joint account since October 27, 2001; a copy of a life insurance enrollment form dated January 25, 2002, which listed Martínez as the beneficiary of Ms. Reynoso's life insurance policy; and copies of Ms. Reynoso's 2002 tax returns, which were filed as “married filing separately.” 8 While her third waiver petition was pending, Ms. Reynoso remarried.
DHS denied the third waiver petition and issued a notice of termination of conditional resident status on February 4, 2009. The denial letter cited a “lack of convincing documentary evidence” that the marriage was bona fide, i.e., that it “was not entered into for the sole purpose of procuring [her] admission as an immigrant.” 9 DHS then placed her in removal proceedings because her conditional resident status had been terminated and she had no continuing authorization to remain in the United States. See8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(D)(i). Before the IJ, Ms. Reynoso pursued her petition for removal of the conditions on her residency and also filed an application for cancellation of removal. See id. §§ 1186a(b)(2), 1229b(b)(1). On March 10, 2010, while her removal proceedings were pending, Ms. Reynoso's second husband filed a visa petition on her behalf with DHS.10
On July 29, 2010, an IJ held a merits hearing on Ms. Reynoso's petition to remove the conditions on her residency and her cancellation of removal application. In addition to the evidence submitted with her petition at the administrative level, Ms. Reynoso offered her own new statement as well as several letters, including one indicating an attempt to contact her former husband.
Ms. Reynoso was the only witness to testify at the hearing. She testified that she had dated her first husband for approximately one year before they married on January 20, 2001. According to Ms. Reynoso, the “marriage functioned very well” in the beginning, but, over time, her husband “bec[ame] very distant.” 11 It ended after an argument in which Martínez confessed to Ms. Reynoso that he was attracted to men. She also testified that, once she had been placed in removal proceedings, she located Martínez and he pledged to assist her.
On cross-examination, Ms. Reynoso indicated that she and Martínez separated during the summer of 2002. Ms. Reynoso admitted that, when she filed her first petition to waive the conditions in November 2003, the letter she wrote accompanying the petition indicated that she and her husband had separated in October 2002.12 Ms. Reynoso then testified that she left the marital home in April, May or the summer of 2002. When confronted with these discrepancies, her testimony became confused. She stated that she knew “what [she] put” in her previous statements and she was “aware of the dates” to which she was currently testifying.13 She said that she had copies of her prior statements and had reviewed them. She attempted to reconcile the inconsistencies by stating that October 2002 was an “approximate” time, and she provided that date only to establishduring “which part of the year ... this happened.” 14 She later stated that the couple separated in August or October 2002 and that her previous statement that he had left in October provided only a “month of reference.” 15
Ms. Reynoso also gave somewhat confusing testimony about her prior addresses. She testified that she and Martínez had lived on Hampshire Street in Lawrence, Massachusetts. She indicated that they had begun living at that address in the summer of 2000, six or eight months or possibly a year before they were married.16 Ms. Reynoso claimed that they had resided in the same house for approximately one year and that she had left the marital home a few weeks after she and Martínez had separated. Although she claimed that she had met Martínez in 1999 and that they had begun dating in 2000, she could not recall how long Martínez had lived on Hampshire Street before they had started cohabitating, nor could she recall if he had lived somewhere else before the time that they started dating.
Ms. Reynoso also testified that she had lived and worked in New York City, not Lawrence, prior to moving in with Martínez. When asked whether she ever had lived on Bunker Hill in Lawrence, she responded that she had stayed at that address when she visited a friend named Luisa Castillo. When asked why she previously had indicated to DHS that she lived at that address from September 1994 to March 2000, she stated that she had provided that address in response to a question about her address when she moved to Lawrence, and she had not lived there in 1994.17
On July 29, 2010, the IJ issued an oral decision finding Ms. Reynoso removable as charged, denying her request for waiver of the joint filing requirement and denying her application for cancellation of removal. The IJ stated that, on the subject of her employment and residence history, Ms. Reynoso's testimony was “at great variance from information that she provided previously to the Government in connection with her application for adjustment of status.” 18 In reaching that conclusion, the IJ reviewed each item of evidence that Ms. Reynoso had submitted before the agency and before the immigration court in support of her petition, along with her testimony, and noted numerous discrepancies: the dates on which she had lived in Massachusetts, where in Massachusetts she had lived, when she met Martínez,...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Agyei v. Holder
...statements not made under oath.’ ” Kungys, 485 U.S. at 780, 108 S.Ct. 1537 (quoting and adopting government's brief). In Reynoso v. Holder, 711 F.3d 199 (1st Cir.2013), we clarified that the applicability of a nondiscretionary bar to demonstrating good moral character is a legal question th......
-
Tillery v. Lynch
...as the crux of the matter and treat this case as one in which the BIA rested its decision on an alternative basis. See Reynoso v. Holder, 711 F.3d 199, 205 (1st Cir.2013) ; Halo v. Gonzales, 419 F.3d 15, 19 (1st Cir.2005). Accordingly, it is the BIA's opinion that serves as the final agency......
-
Wen Yuan Chan v. Lynch
...that might have led a factfinder reasonably to conclude that she and Sui Wah Chan intended to make a life together. SeeReynoso v. Holder, 711 F.3d 199, 207 (1st Cir. 2013) (upholding a determination that marriage was not bona fide where the alien's documentary evidence was "limited" and lac......
-
Cabrera v. Lynch
...the second anniversary of the date on which that status was acquired. See id. § 1186a(c)(1), (d)(2)(A) ; see also Reynoso v. Holder, 711 F.3d 199, 202 n. 4 (1st Cir.2013).The application process for the removal of conditional status entails two steps: first, the alien and the citizen spouse......