Hodzic v. Bondi

Court of Appeals for the First Circuit·Decided March 19, 2026·No. 24-1696·Published

Opinion

United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

Nos. 24-1204, 24-1696 REDZO HODZIC; EDINA HODZIC, Petitioners,

v.

PAMELA J. BONDI, United States Attorney General, Respondent.*

PETITIONS FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS

Before

Barron, Chief Judge,

Gelpí and Rikelman, Circuit Judges.

Melanie Shapiro, with whom Law Office of Melanie Shapiro, LLC, was on brief, for petitioners.

Taryn L. Arbeiter, with whom Brian Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, Walter Bocchini, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, and Leslie McKay, Assistant Director, Office of Immigration, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice, were on brief, for respondent.

* Pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 43(c)(2), Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi is automatically substituted for former Attorney General Merrick B. Garland as respondent.

March 19, 2026

GELPÍ, Circuit Judge. In these consolidated petitions for review, Edina and Redzo Hodzic (the "Hodzics") seek review of the Board of Immigration Appeals's (BIA) orders denying their motion to reopen sua sponte and their motion to reconsider. The Hodzics contend that the BIA's denial of their motion to reopen rested on legal and constitutional errors. We deny the Hodzics' petitions for review.

I. BACKGROUND

We gather our background from the administrative record, which includes the Hodzics' testimony before the immigration judge ("IJ") in October 2001. See, e.g., Gonzalez-Arevalo v. Garland, 112 F.4th 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2024).

A. Entry into the United States Edina Hodzic is a native and citizen of Serbia, formerly part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Her husband, Redzo Hodzic, is a native and citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia, formerly part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Hodzics are Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) who, prior to entering the United States, lived in the Sandzak region of Serbia. In their brief, the Hodzics refer to the Bosnian genocide that took place between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Kosovo War that ended in 1999 to describe the conditions existing in their region right before they left Sandzak in 2000.

Edina testified before the IJ that the Hodzics fled from Serbia in May 2000 because they grew fearful of the increased presence of Serbian military forces in Sandzak following the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) bombing of Serbia in 1999. They worried that conditions in Serbia or North Macedonia would not be safe for their soon-to-be-born child.

On June 22, 2000, the Hodzics entered the United States by presenting forged Slovenian passports at Dulles International Airport in Virginia. During an interview with an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) inspector at Dulles, the Hodzics expressed fear of returning to Serbia and North Macedonia. Accordingly, the INS (now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)) referred them for an interview with an asylum officer. After the asylum officer determined that the Hodzics had a credible fear of persecution, they were paroled into the United States and placed in removal proceedings.

B. Procedural History

On June 26, 2000, the INS filed Notices to Appear with the Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia. The INS charged the Hodzics as removable under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i) for fraudulently or willfully misrepresenting a material fact to procure admission into the United States and under § 1182(a)(7)(A)(i)(I) for lacking a valid entry document at the time of their application for admission. The Notices to Appear

listed the time and date of the hearings as "to be determined." On July 7, 2000, the Arlington Immigration Court sent a second Notice of Hearing in Removal Proceedings, which specified that both cases were scheduled for a Master Hearing on August 17, 2000, at 9:00 a.m. In August 2000, the venue for the removal proceedings changed to the Immigration Court in Boston, Massachusetts. The Hodzics had their first master calendar hearing on November 2, 2000, where they submitted written pleadings to the charges contained in the Notices to Appear and requested the opportunity to apply for asylum, withholding of removal, or relief under the Convention Against Torture.

In March 2001, Edina filed an I-589 Application for Asylum and Withholding of Removal and designated Redzo as a derivative applicant. The application listed four grounds for asylum: persecution based on her religious identity "as a [Muslim] from the region of Sandzak in Serbia,"1 imputed political opinion "due to the political activities of the Bosnian/[Muslim] community," nationality, and membership in a particular social group (the Bosniak community of Sandzak).

In October 2001, the IJ heard testimony from the Hodzics regarding the I-589 Application. In March 2002, the IJ issued a

As a Bosnian Muslim growing up in the Sandzak region, Edina 1

was "aware of the risks of openly identifying with the . . . Bosniak community" and had to practice her religion in secret.

written decision finding the Hodzics removable as charged and ineligible for relief and protection from removal. In April 2002, the Hodzics appealed this decision and in April 2004, the BIA dismissed the appeal. The Hodzics then filed a petition for review with this Court, which was voluntarily dismissed. See Judgment, Hodzic v. Gonzales, No. 04-1684 (1st Cir. Oct. 25, 2006).

On June 9, 2005, while the petition for review was pending in this Court, the Hodzics filed a motion to reopen removal proceedings with the BIA, seeking adjustment of status based on an approved employment-based visa for Redzo. The BIA denied the motion on December 27, 2005, finding it untimely. The Hodzics then sought reconsideration of the BIA's denial of the motion to reopen, which the BIA denied on April 13, 2006.

On April 29, 2006, the Hodzics filed Applications to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status ("Adjustment Applications"). Following a jointly filed motion to reopen submitted by the Hodzics and DHS, the BIA reopened proceedings and remanded the record to the IJ on September 29, 2006. The IJ then terminated the removal proceedings solely to permit the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to adjudicate their applications for adjustment of status. On September 24, 2009, the USCIS denied the Adjustment Applications, finding that the Hodzics "sought admission to the United States by fraud or willful misrepresentation" and thus were inadmissible under 8

U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i). Their case was then transferred back to the Boston Immigration Court, where the IJ ultimately ordered the removal of Redzo to North Macedonia, and in the alternative, to Serbia, and the removal of Edina to the former Republic of Yugoslavia. The Hodzics subsequently filed an appeal with the BIA, which the BIA dismissed on May 21, 2013.

In March 2020, the Hodzics filed a motion to reopen sua sponte before the BIA. On July 9, 2021, the BIA denied the motion to reopen.

On July 28, 2021, the Hodzics filed another motion to reopen sua sponte. On this occasion, the Hodzics argued that Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 593 U.S. 155 (2021), introduced a "fundamental change in case law" that made them eligible for non- lawful permanent resident cancellation of removal. Niz-Chavez held that a notice to appear sufficient to trigger the "stop-time rule" is a single document containing all the information required under 8 U.S.C. § 1229(a)(l),2 and that inadequate or incomplete notices to appear cannot be cured by one or more subsequent notices. Id. at 170. The Hodzics argued that DHS never issued

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