Elvis Leonel Morfa Diaz v. Acting Secretary, Department of Homeland Security

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedAugust 5, 2022
Docket21-10763
StatusPublished

This text of Elvis Leonel Morfa Diaz v. Acting Secretary, Department of Homeland Security (Elvis Leonel Morfa Diaz v. Acting Secretary, Department of Homeland Security) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Elvis Leonel Morfa Diaz v. Acting Secretary, Department of Homeland Security, (11th Cir. 2022).

Opinion

USCA11 Case: 21-10763 Date Filed: 08/05/2022 Page: 1 of 17

[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________

No. 21-10763 ____________________

ELVIS LEONEL MORFA DIAZ, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, UR JADOU, DIRECTOR, U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES,

Defendants-Appellees. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 6:20-cv-01025-RBD-EJK ____________________ USCA11 Case: 21-10763 Date Filed: 08/05/2022 Page: 2 of 17

2 Opinion of the Court 21-10763

Before WILSON, BRANCH, and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges. BRANCH, Circuit Judge: Elvis Morfa Diaz appeals the district court’s dismissal with prejudice of his complaint challenging the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service’s (“USCIS”) denial of his naturalization application pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1421(c). The government denied his application because of Morfa Diaz’s 1996 drug crime conviction in New York, which it found constituted an aggravated felony under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101(f)(8), 1427(a), permanently rendering him ineligible for naturalization. Morfa Diaz claims that the district court’s denial of his challenge to his administrative appeal was improper because his 1996 conviction did not categorically qualify as an aggravated felony. Rather, according to Morfa Diaz, New York’s statute also criminalized human chorionic gonadotrophin (“hCG”), making it broader than the federal Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. § 801 et seq. In fact, however, New York did not add hCG to its controlled substances schedule until 2017, which Morfa Diaz conceded at oral argument. Hence, after careful consideration and with the benefit of oral argument, we affirm. I. BACKGROUND In 1996, two years into his lawful residency in the United States, Elvis Morfa Diaz, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, was convicted of the attempted sale of a controlled substance— USCA11 Case: 21-10763 Date Filed: 08/05/2022 Page: 3 of 17

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cocaine—in the third degree under New York Penal Law (“NYPL”) § 220.39 for which he was sentenced to five years’ probation. Ostensibly, Morfa Diaz stayed out of trouble from that point on, and, in November 2018, he applied for naturalization with the USCIS. However, after concluding that Morfa Diaz’s crime of conviction qualified as an aggravated felony, USCIS denied his application pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a)(3) because he failed to establish good moral character, and his conviction precluded him from ever satisfying the moral character requirement for naturalization.1 See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43) (defining aggravated felonies to include “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance (as defined in [21 U.S.C. § 802]), including a drug trafficking crime (as defined in [18 U.S.C. § 924(c)])”). Morfa Diaz subsequently appealed USCIS’s determination. Citing to the Second Circuit’s decision in Pascual v. Holder, 723 F.3d 156 (2d Cir. 2013), which held that offers or attempts to sell cocaine in violation of NYPL § 220.39 qualify as aggravated felonies, USCIS denied his administrative appeal. Undaunted, Morfa Diaz filed suit against the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of USCIS

1 8 U.S.C. § 1427(a) provides that “[n]o person . . . shall be naturalized unless such applicant . . . has been and still is a person of good moral character.” Meanwhile, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(f)(8) establishes that “[n]o person shall be regarded as, or found to be, a person of good moral character who, during the period for which good moral character is required to be established, is, or was . . . one who at any time has been convicted of an aggravated felony . . . .” USCA11 Case: 21-10763 Date Filed: 08/05/2022 Page: 4 of 17

4 Opinion of the Court 21-10763

under 8 U.S.C. § 1421(c) in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, seeking to appeal the denial of his naturalization application.2 In response, USCIS filed a motion to dismiss Morfa Diaz’s complaint, arguing that his 1996 aggravated felony conviction precluded him from establishing the requisite good moral character, forever shutting the door on his naturalization. Morfa Diaz responded that although “the actual comparison should relate to the versions of the State and federal provisions in 1996, the year in which [he] was convicted,” a cursory review of the New York drug schedules, NYPL § 3306, and the Controlled Substances Act, 8 U.S.C. § 812, in effect in 2020 revealed that New York criminalized the sale of numerous substances not covered under federal law, and was therefore not a categorical match. He also caveated that he had not reviewed the Federal Register which, he recognized, could contain other substances prohibited by federal law. 3 At any rate, according to Morfa Diaz, the statute’s current potential—but, by his own admission, unconfirmed—overbreadth meant that his prior conviction could not qualify as an aggravated felony or necessarily preclude him

2 Section 1421(c) permits a naturalization applicant to seek judicial review of the administrative decision. 8 U.S.C. § 1421(c). 3 Although the district court did not pursue it, we note that Morfa Diaz’s counsel’s inexcusable efforts border on sanctionable conduct. By failing to conduct the proper research—instead offering to “provide a further comparison of the schedules” only “if required”—counsel not only consciously and overtly presented a frivolous argument to the district court, but also muddied the record for a spurious challenge on appeal, too. USCA11 Case: 21-10763 Date Filed: 08/05/2022 Page: 5 of 17

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from showing good moral character. In its reply, USCIS noted that Morfa Diaz cited exclusively to the 2020 version of § 220.39, not the version in effect at the time of his 1996 conviction. Likewise, USCIS also pointed to the later federal regulation adding hCG to the Controlled Substances Act’s list of prohibited substances, thus demonstrating the statutes’ current congruence. Agreeing with USCIS, the district court granted its motion to dismiss Morfa Diaz’s complaint with prejudice.

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Elvis Leonel Morfa Diaz v. Acting Secretary, Department of Homeland Security, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/elvis-leonel-morfa-diaz-v-acting-secretary-department-of-homeland-ca11-2022.