Summary
This Third Circuit Court of Appeals opinion addresses a petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order denying certification of a late-filed appeal. The court holds that it lacks jurisdiction to review the BIA's discretionary decision not to self-certify the appeal and dismisses unexhausted claims due to the untimely filing. On remand following Supreme Court instruction, the court reaffirms its binding precedent that the petitioner did not derive U.S. citizenship from his father, noting that the recent Loper Bright decision overruling Chevron deference further supports applying established judicial interpretations of the relevant immigration statute.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether this Court has jurisdiction to review the BIA’s denial of self‑certification of a late‑filed appeal.
- Whether the petitioner exhausted administrative remedies for his claims.
- Whether a defective Notice to Appear that omits the date and time of the first hearing deprives the immigration court of jurisdiction.
- Whether the petitioner derived United States citizenship under 8 U.S.C. § 1432(a).
Holdings
- The Court lacks jurisdiction to review the BIA’s discretionary decision to decline self‑certification because the regulation commits the action to agency discretion.
- The petitioner failed to exhaust administrative remedies because his untimely BIA appeal does not satisfy the exhaustion requirement.
- The defective NTA does not deprive the immigration court of jurisdiction.
- The petitioner does not derive citizenship because the statutory requirement that the parent be naturalized after a legal separation was not satisfied.
Key quotations
“The provision includes no language limiting the BIA’s decision to decline self‑certification — so there is no standard by which we may review it.”
“We are bound by the ordinary meaning of the words Congress has chosen. Yet the term “when” has several ordinary meanings, and two of them — a temporal sense and a conditional sense — reasonably could apply in this case.”
Factual background
Abdulmalik Abdulla was born in Yemen in 1976. His father naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1986; the parents separated three years later. Abdulla entered the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 1990. He later faced removal proceedings after criminal convictions and asserted derivative citizenship based on his father's naturalization.
Procedural history
The district court dismissed the petition in part for lack of jurisdiction and lack of merit in 2020. The petitioner sought certiorari on the derivative citizenship issue; the Supreme Court granted and vacated the judgment, remanding for further consideration. The Third Circuit now reviews the petition on remand.