Fourth Circuit Rejects Attorney General Sessions’ Effort to Limit Immigration Court Case Closures

August 30, 2019

Suzanne Monyak on Law360 (subscription required) reports that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge G. Steven Agee, an appointee of President George W. Bush, has overturned a decision by former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions that limited immigration judges’ ability to administratively close cases. The Fourth Circuit held that the immigration courts have unambiguous authority to manage their dockets as necessary.

The court refused to defer to Sessions’ reasoning in Matter of Castro-Tum — a Board of Immigration Appeals case that he had referred to himself for review, a rare action — saying that the regulations governing judges’ authority to manage their own caseload were clear. In Matter of Castro-Tum, Sessions held that immigration judges and appellate board members do not have general authority to suspend immigration cases through “administrative closure,” which judges had employed to pause lower-priority immigration court proceedings in the interest of managing judicial resources.

Bender’s Immigration Bulletin, as always, focuses our attention on the critical passages of the ruling in Zuniga Romero v. Barr:

“After an immigration judge (“IJ”) denied Jesus Zuniga Romero’s request for administrative closure of his case—which would have removed it from the IJ’s active docket pending the completion of a separate immigration proceeding—Romero petitioned the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) for review. Although the BIA initially sustained Romero’s appeal and administratively closed his case, it later dismissed the appeal after a precedential decision issued by the Attorney General in Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I. & N. Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018). In Castro-Tum, the Attorney General concluded that IJs and the BIA do not have the general authority to administratively close cases. Romero now brings a petition for review of the BIA’s decision to this Court. For the reasons we discuss below, we grant Romero’s petition for review, vacate the BIA’s decision, and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion. … In sum, the result is that 8 C.F.R. §§ 1003.10(b) and 1003.1(d)(1)(ii) unambiguously confer upon IJs and the BIA the general authority to administratively close cases such that the BIA’s decision should be vacated and remanded.” (emphasis added).

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