Damien Williams v. Merrick Garland, No. 20-1854 (4th Cir. 2023)
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deported Petitioner Petitioner, a permanent resident of the United States since he was six years old, because the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA or the Board) deemed his altercation with the police an aggravated felony. Because of that designation, Petitioner was not allowed back into the United States, not even to visit. He would spend the next eleven years in Jamaica, working mostly for room and board, his U.S.-citizen mother, siblings, girlfriend, and children affording only a handful of trips to see him. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the type of offense Petitioner committed no longer qualified as an aggravated felony. Learning of that decision in 2019, Petitioner moved the BIA to reconsider its original removal order and to equitably toll the usual thirty-day deadline for filing such motions in view of the legal change. The BIA declined. It did not dispute that Petitioner is entitled to be readmitted into the country, but it rejected Petitioner’s request to toll the limitations period, believing him insufficiently diligent in discovering his rights.
The Fourth Circuit held that it has have jurisdiction to review the BIA’s decision and that it must review it de novo. And the Court vacated the Board’s diligence determination, remanding to the BIA to consider the second prong of the equitable-tolling inquiry—whether the change in the law constituted an extraordinary circumstance—as well as the merits of Petitioner’s claim.
This opinion or order relates to an opinion or order originally issued on November 16, 2022.
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