Avila-Ramirez v. Holder, No. 13-3300 (7th Cir. 2014)
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Ramirez, a citizen of Guatemala, was admitted to the U.S. as a permanent resident in 1977, then seven years old. He has remained in the U.S. After three years of high school, he joined the Marine Corps. He later obtained his GED, attended community college, and received certification to become an optical technician. He has been consistently employed as an adult. He lives with his fiancé, who suffers from lupus and Sjögren’s syndrome and is unable to work, and their son, born in 2003. Ramirez’s mother, siblings, grandmother, and uncles live in the U.S. In 1990 he: was convicted of inflicting corporal injury upon a spouse or cohabitant and sentenced to 79 days in jail; received a bad conduct discharge from the military for writing bad checks and was sentenced to 90 days’ incarceration; and pled guilty to committing a lewd and lascivious act with a child under the age of 14, received a sentence of six years’ imprisonment and relinquished parental rights to his daughter, the victim’s half-sister. Ramirez was last convicted in 1990. He has, however, been questioned or arrested multiple times since then. An immigration judge found Ramirez “credible” at a hearing requesting discretionary relief from removal, but relied on uncorroborated arrest reports to find that Ramirez failed to show “rehabilitation.” The BIA affirmed. The Seventh Circuit granted a petition for review, stating that the BIA erred by failing to follow its own binding precedent.
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