United States v. Martinez-Martinez

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: October 17, 2024
• Docket: 23-2654
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS OCT 17 2024 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 23-2654 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellee, 2:22-cr-00574-JJT-1 v. MEMORANDUM* JUNIOR STANDLY MARTINEZ- MARTINEZ,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona John Joseph Tuchi, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted September 12, 2024 Phoenix, Arizona

Before: RAWLINSON and COLLINS, Circuit Judges, and FITZWATER, District Judge.**

Junior Standly Martinez-Martinez (Martinez-Martinez), a citizen of

Honduras, appeals from the district court’s denial of his motion to dismiss the

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Sidney A. Fitzwater, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, sitting by designation. indictment charging him with illegal reentry in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. We

have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

“We review de novo a motion to dismiss an indictment under 8

U.S.C. § 1326 on the basis of a claimed due process defect in the predicate

deportation proceeding.” United States v. De La Mora-Cobian, 18 F.4th 1141,

1145 (9th Cir. 2021) (citation omitted). “Mixed questions of law and fact . . . are

also reviewed de novo, while the underlying facts are reviewed for clear error.” Id.

(citations omitted).

1. Martinez-Martinez contends that the district court erroneously denied

the motion to dismiss the indictment because “he [demonstrated] a due process

right to collaterally attack the 1998 Removal Order.” “To prevail in a collateral

attack on the underlying removal order in a motion to dismiss, [Martinez-Martinez]

must, as a threshold matter, show that he exhausted his administrative remedies.”

United States v. Villavicencio-Burruel, 608 F.3d 556, 559 (9th Cir. 2010) (citations

omitted); see also 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d).1

1 “In a criminal proceeding under this section, [a non-citizen] may not challenge the validity of the deportation order . . . unless the [non-citizen] demonstrates that - - (1) the [non-citizen] exhausted any administrative remedies that may have been available to seek relief against the order; (2) the deportation proceedings at which the order was issued improperly deprived the [non-citizen] of the opportunity for judicial review; and (3) the entry of the order was fundamentally unfair.” 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d). The district court held that Martinez-Martinez did not satisfy the first two requirements, and it therefore did not address the third.

2 23-2654 Martinez-Martinez has not met the first threshold requirement. Martinez-

Martinez maintains that administrative remedies were unavailable to him because

the withdrawal of his “appeal [was] the functional equivalent” of an invalid waiver.

However, in Villavicencio-Burruel, we held that, by “declin[ing] to exercise [the]

right” to appeal, Villavicencio failed to “comply with § 1326(d)(1)’s exhaustion

requirement.” 608 F.3d at 560. We concluded that failure to file an appeal was not

“tantamount to [him] waiving his appeal rights . . . and does not excuse the

nonexhaustion.” Id.

Federal regulations in effect when Martinez-Martinez filed his withdrawal

treated the withdrawal of an appeal the same as failure to file an appeal. See 8

C.F.R. § 3.4 (1999). Therefore, the reasoning of Villavicencio-Burruel forecloses

Martinez-Martinez’s argument that the withdrawal of his appeal was the equivalent

of an invalid waiver.

2. Contrary to Martinez-Martinez’s argument, he also failed to establish

that he was deprived of an opportunity for judicial review. “Because he could have

sought judicial review had he taken such an appeal, [Martinez-Martinez] was not

deprived of the opportunity for judicial review and therefore did not satisfy §

1326(d)(2).” United States v. Portillo-Gonzalez, 80 F.4th 910, 920 (9th Cir. 2023)

(alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the district court did not

err by denying the motion to dismiss the indictment because Martinez-Martinez

3 23-2654 could not collaterally challenge the validity of the 1998 Removal Order. See

Villavicencio-Burruel, 608 F.3d at 560; see also United States v. Castellanos-

Avalos, 22 F.4th 1142, 1146 (9th Cir. 2022) (citation and quotation marks omitted)

(“[A] failure to satisfy any of the three prongs [of § 1326(d)] dooms a collateral

attack on a removal order.”) (emphasis in the original).

AFFIRMED.

4 23-2654