The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has granted a petition for review and vacated a portion of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision concerning Haitian native Roobens Maurice, who is facing removal from the United States.
The court’s ruling on Maurice v. Bondi centers on the administrative agency’s use of uncorroborated police reports when denying Maurice’s application for adjustment of status.
The court, in a decision penned by Circuit Judge Aframe, vacated the BIA’s order regarding the adjustment of status application and remanded the case for further proceedings.
The panel, which included Chief Judge Barron and Circuit Judge Gelpí, determined that the agency may have violated its own precedent by giving “substantial weight” to police reports detailing alleged criminal conduct that did not result in a conviction, without a proper finding of corroborating evidence.
Maurice entered the U.S. on a temporary visa in April 2010 and received a notice to appear for overstaying his visa less than two years later in February 2012. His case was administratively closed when he obtained temporary protected status, which was extended until July 2017.
In the following years, Maurice had several arrests in New Hampshire for alleged domestic incidents:
- December 2018: Arrested for stalking and domestic violence for allegedly entering his estranged wife’s home in violation of a bail order. The case was ultimately dropped.
- May 2020: Arrested for simple assault domestic violence after allegedly hitting his wife in the jaw with a drill during a dispute, an incident he testified was accidental.
- July 2020: Arrested for simple assault domestic violence and resisting arrest following an argument with another woman.
Following his final arrest, removal proceedings were initiated. An Immigration Judge (IJ) found Maurice removable for overstaying his visa and, despite finding his and his wife’s personal testimony credible, denied his application for adjustment of status as a matter of discretion. The IJ placed “strong weight” on the police reports due to inconsistencies between the reports and the couple’s testimony about the arrests.
Maurice appealed the denial, arguing the BIA erred in affirming the IJ’s reliance on the police reports. The First Circuit addressed this challenge, focusing on whether the agency adhered to its own legal standards.
The court determined that the core issue was the BIA’s apparent failure to follow the precedent established in In re Arreguin De Rodriguez (Arreguin), which requires that to give “substantial weight” to a police report detailing alleged criminal conduct that did not result in a conviction, there must be “corroborating evidence of the [report’s] allegations.”
The IJ and BIA had relied heavily on the misconduct described in the police reports—including the May 2020 drill incident, the July 2020 assault/resisting arrest, and the 2018 stalking charge—to deny the adjustment of status, clearly giving them “substantial weight.”
The government argued that Maurice’s own hearing testimony—where he confirmed aspects of the arrests, such as admitting to accidentally striking his wife and entering her apartment through a window—served as the necessary corroboration. However, the First Circuit noted that neither the IJ nor the BIA explicitly made a corroboration finding under the Arreguin standard.
“The BIA appears to have determined that the IJ permissibly relied on the police reports as a basis for resolving inconsistencies between Maurice’s and his wife’s hearing testimony,” the court stated, but there was “no indication from the BIA’s decision that it viewed Maurice’s testimony as corroborating the police reports.”
Because the court could not conclude that the BIA considered the required corroboration before giving the reports substantial weight, it vacated the denial of adjustment of status and remanded the case to the BIA for a determination on whether the administrative record contains the necessary corroboration to support the discretionary denial.
Maurice also challenged the denial of his application for cancellation of removal, which requires an applicant to show ten years of continuous physical presence in the U.S. The IJ had found Maurice ineligible because the clock stopped when he was served a notice to appear in February 2012, less than two years after his arrival.
The First Circuit rejected Maurice’s arguments that the 2012 notice to appear was defective, stating that Maurice had only raised a claim that the notice omitted the time and place of the hearing (a Pereira v. Sessions argument) to the BIA, and failed to administratively exhaust the additional arguments he presented on appeal (such as being a minor at the time of service). As a result, the court lacked jurisdiction to consider those unexhausted claims and affirmed the denial of cancellation of removal eligibility.
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