Duran Gonzales v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security

659 F.3d 930, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 21494, 2011 WL 5041784
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedOctober 25, 2011
Docket09-35174
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 659 F.3d 930 (Duran Gonzales v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Duran Gonzales v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 659 F.3d 930, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 21494, 2011 WL 5041784 (9th Cir. 2011).

Opinion

OPINION

CALLAHAN, Circuit Judge:

Aurelio Duran Gonzalez, along with six individuals (“Plaintiffs”), voluntarily filed applications for adjustment of status, thus disclosing that they were aliens who had been removed and had reentered the United States without inspection. They did this in reliance on the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Perez-Gonzalez v. Ashcroft, 379 F.3d 783 (9th Cir.2004), wherein the court purportedly held that individuals like Plaintiffs were eligible for relief. The district court certified Plaintiffs’ proposed class and issued a preliminary injunction.

The government appealed, and in Duran Gonzales v. Department of Homeland Security, 508 F.3d 1227 (9th Cir.2007) (“Duran Gonzales II ”), we held that, pursuant to the Supreme Court’s directions in National Cable & Telecommunications Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U.S. 967, 981-985, 125 S.Ct. 2688, 162 L.Ed.2d 820 (2005) (“Brand X ”), we were compelled to follow the 2006 opinion by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) in In re Torres-Garcia, 23 I. & N. Dec. 866 (BIA 2006). In In re Torres-Garcia, the BIA held that individuals such as Plaintiffs were not eligible for relief. We held that, because this was a reasonable interpretation of a statute by the agency charged with interpreting and enforcing the statute, and because our prior opinion in Perez-Gonzalez was based on the statute’s ambiguity, Brand X required that we defer to the BIA’s interpretation of the statute, even though it was contrary to our prior interpretation of the statute in Perez-Gonzalez. Duran Gonzales II, 508 F.3d at 1242.

Accordingly, we vacated the district court’s injunction and remanded the matter. Our opinion stated that “[pjursuant to In re Torres-Garcia, plaintiffs as a matter of law are not eligible to adjust their status because they are ineligible to receive 1-212 waivers.” Id. On remand, the district court held that Duran Gonzales II was binding, declined to allow Plaintiffs to amend their complaint or the class certification, and dismissed Plaintiffs’ action.

Plaintiffs appeal, arguing that Duran Gonzales II should be given prospective application only. We affirm the district court’s dismissal of the action because Du *933 ran Gonzales II applied its ruling to the Plaintiffs, and another three-judge panel has held that Duran Gonzales II has retroactive application. See Morales-Izquierdo v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 600 F.3d 1076, 1086 (9th Cir.2010).

I

Plaintiffs are individuals who are not citizens of the United States, who were previously deported or removed from the United States, and who reentered the United States without inspection. After returning to the United States, Plaintiffs sought to adjust their immigration status by filing applications for adjustment of status under 8 U.S.C. § 1256. The statute “allowed the Attorney General to adjust the status of an alien who had entered the United States without inspection to that of a legal permanent resident provided that the alien (1) was admissible to the United States and the beneficiary of an immediately available immigrant visa, and (2) paid an application fee five times the usual fee.” Duran Gonzales II, 508 F.3d at 1230.

Plaintiffs’ course to adjustment of status, however, was complicated by two provisions of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (“IIRIRA”). The first appeared to deny Plaintiffs relief. Title 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(5) provides “for automatic reinstatement of an alien’s prior removal or deportation order when an alien has reentered the United States illegally,” and further provides that the “alien is not eligible and may not apply for any relief.” Duran Gonzales II, 508 F.3d at 1230.

The second section suggested a possible exception to this bar. Although 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(9)(C)(i) provides that an alien “who enters or attempts to reenter the United States without being admitted is inadmissible,” § 1182(a)(9)(C)(ii) creates an exception for

an alien seeking admission more than 10 years after the date of the alien’s last departure from the United States if, pri- or to the alien’s reembarkation at a place outside the United States or attempt to be readmitted from a foreign contiguous territory, the Secretary of Homeland Security has consented to the alien’s reapplying for admission.

8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(9)(C)(ii). The exception had two conditions of particular relevance to Plaintiffs: (1) it was only available if made more than 10 years after the alien’s last departure; and (2) the application has to be made from outside the United States.

Plaintiffs, however, found encouragement in our opinion in Perez-Gonzalez, which held “that the INS committed legal error when it concluded that Perez-Gonzalez could not apply for a Form 1-212 waiver from within this country.” Perez-Gonzalez, 379 F.3d at 789. Accordingly, Plaintiffs filed both 1-212 forms seeking relief under § 1182(a)(9)(C)(ii) and applications for adjustment of status under § 1255(i) with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”). USCIS denied three of the Plaintiffs’ applications on the ground that the ten-year period had not elapsed since the dates of the applicants’ last departures from the United States.

Plaintiffs then filed their complaint with the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. They argued that USCIS’s position — that an alien’s failure to meet the ten-year requirement barred a successful 1-212 application — -was contrary to Perez-Gonzalez, and sought injunctive and declaratory relief, a temporary restraining order, and class certification. The district court granted a preliminary injunction and certified a class. The Department of Homeland Security filed a timely appeal.

*934 II

On appeal, we were constrained by the Supreme Court’s opinion in Brand X, 545 U.S. 967, 125 S.Ct. 2688, in which the Court “held that the circuit court must apply Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.,

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Bluebook (online)
659 F.3d 930, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 21494, 2011 WL 5041784, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/duran-gonzales-v-us-department-of-homeland-security-ca9-2011.