Sigitas Brinklys v. Secretary, Department of Homeland Security

702 F. App'x 856
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedJuly 17, 2017
Docket16-13215 Non-Argument Calendar
StatusUnpublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 702 F. App'x 856 (Sigitas Brinklys v. 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
Sigitas Brinklys v. Secretary, Department of Homeland Security, 702 F. App'x 856 (11th Cir. 2017).

Opinion

PER CURIAM:

Plaintiffs Sigitas Brinklys and Aurelija Caruso (“Aurelija”) appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants following the denial of Brinklys’s 1-130 petition seeking an immigrant visa on behalf of his spouse, Aure-lija. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (“CIS”) denied the petition after concluding that Aurelija had previously entered into a fraudulent marriage for the purpose of evading immigration laws. On appeal, Plaintiffs argue that (1) the CIS violated its own regulations *858 and Brinklys’s due process rights by providing insufficient notice of the denial, and (2) the record did not support the marriage fraud determination that prevented Brinklys’s visa petition from being granted. After careful review, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background

Aurelija and Raimondas Kalinauskas, both citizens of Lithuania, arrived in the United States on visitor’s visas on February 10, 2000, with permission to stay until August 9, 2000. Their visa applications listed the same intended address in Blissfield, Ohio.

On February 21, 2003, Aurelija married United States citizen Frank Caruso in Illinois. Approximately one month latex’, Kali-nauskas married Luzmaria Martinez, also a United States citizen. On May 19, 2002, Martinez and Caruso both filed 1-180 petitions seeking immigrant visas for Kali-nauskas and Aurelija, respectively. In his petition, Caruso i*epresented that he and Aurelija had lived together on Arapahoe Court in Naperville, Illinois since February 2003. In 2007, before the CIS adjudicated their petition, Caruso and Aurelija divorced.

In the meantime, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued an internal memorandum concluding that Caruso and Aurelija’s maiviage was entered into for the purpose of evading immigration laws. In support of this determination, the memorandum made the following findings and observations. At their immigration interview in September 2005, Caruso and Aurelia claimed to live together at the same address. However, Caruso’s state identification bearing that address was issued only three days before the immigration interview. Moreover, an Illinois police report from February 2005 revealed that during an investigation pertaining to an unrelated criminal matter, state law enforcement officers encountered Kalinaus-kas and Aurelija at the same address. According to the police report, Kalinauskas told officers that Aurelija was his girlfriend, and both Aurelija and Kalinauskas admitted that they lived together and not with their U.S. citizen spouses. Property records were obtained for that address and showed that Aurelija and Kalinauskas purchased the property in 2003, and had identified themselves as husband and wife. Moreover, agents interviewed Caruso’s mother, who stated that Caruso was not married and lived in an apartment in Carol Stream, Illinois. A subsequent review of Caruso’s lease agreement for that apartment showed that Caruso had listed his marital status as single and the only additional occupant as Caruso’s son. Finally, agents interviewed Kalinauskas’s U.S. citizen spouse, who admitted that her marriage to Kalinauskas was a sham and that she had been paid approximately $1,700 to marry him. Based on these findings, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement concluded that Aurelija’s marriage to Caruso was not legitimate.

On November 2, 2007, Aurelija married Brinklys in Palm Coast, Florida. Brinklys later filed an 1-130 petition for alien relative on behalf of Aurelija. The petition stated that Brinklys and Aurelija had lived together since December 2005 on Seagirt Court in Palm Coast, Florida.

On May 23, 2011, the CIS issued a notice of intent to deny, informing Brinklys that the CIS intended to deny his petition. The CIS explained that it believed Aurelija’s prior marriage to Caruso was fraudulently entered into for the purpose of obtaining immigration benefits. The CIS described the information—obtained from the police report, the property records, the lease agreement, and the state *859 ments of. Caruso’s mother and Kalinaus-kas’s U.S. citizen wife—that had led the CIS to question the validity of Aurelija’s prior marriage to Caruso. The CIS also stated that it suspected Brinklys and Au-relija’s marriage to be fraudulent. The CIS provided Brinklys and Aurelija with thirty days to respond to the notice.

After Brinklys filed a response, the CIS denied his petition. The CIS explained that the record showed that Aurelija’s prior marriage to Caruso was fraudulent, as Au-relija and Caruso did not live together, Aurelija lived with Kalinauskas, property records showed that Aurelija and Kali-nauskas purchased property together as husband and wife, Caruso’s mother told investigators that Caruso was not married, and Kalinauskas’s U.S. citizen wife admitted that she married Kalinauskas for money. Moreover, Aurelija had told officers at the time of Kalinauskas’s arrest that they had been friends for eight years. However, she later contradicted this statement during her interview with immigration officials by claiming that Kalinauskas was her stepbrother.

The CIS reviewed Brinklys’s response but concluded that he had failed to overcome the suspicion that Aurelija’s prior marriage to Caruso was fraudulent, and had also failed to establish that Aurelija and Brinklys had a bona fide marriage. The CIS consequently denied the petition under 8 U.S.C. § 1154(c), a provision that bars an alien beneficiary from obtaining a visa if the alien beneficiary has previously entered a fraudulent marriage for the purpose of obtaining immigration benefits.

Plaintiffs appealed the CIS’s decision to the BIA. They asserted that the CIS failed to provide substantial and probative evidence establishing that Aurelija’s prior marriage to Caruso was fraudulent. They also argued that overwhelming evidence established that both of Aurelija’s marriages were bona fide.

After conducting a de novo review, the BIA affirmed the denial of Brinklys’s I-130 petition and dismissed the appeal. First, the BIA agreed that substantial and probative evidence established that Aureli-ja had entered into a fraudulent marriage with Caruso. The BIA explained that the evidence showed that Caruso and Aurelija did not live together, Kalinauskas and Au-relija had purchased and refinanced property together, in which they identified themselves as husband and wife, and Caruso’s mother had stated that Caruso was not married. The BIA rejected Plaintiffs’ argument that the police report was unreliable based on Aurelija’s poor command of the English language because the report did not mention Aurelija’s inability to communicate in English, nor did Aurelija provide any evidence supporting this contention.

The BIA next addressed Plaintiffs’ argument that they were not provided with the police report, property records, or the marriage fraud investigation reports referenced in the notice' of intent to deny. The BIA concluded that the CIS provided Plaintiffs with sufficient information, as the CIS is only required to provide petitioners with notice of the information that forms the basis for the denial of the petition. Stated another way,- there is no requirement that the CIS provide the actual documents that led to that decision.

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702 F. App'x 856, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sigitas-brinklys-v-secretary-department-of-homeland-security-ca11-2017.