Background
Petitioner Pierre Riley, a Jamaican national with prior criminal convictions, sought deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture after being ordered removed to Jamaica. An Immigration Judge granted the relief, but the Board of Immigration Appeals vacated the decision, finding Riley’s fear of torture speculative. Riley petitioned for review, but the court initially dismissed the petition as untimely. The Supreme Court vacated that dismissal, holding the filing deadline was a non-jurisdictional claims-processing rule that the government had waived. On remand, the government raised a new jurisdictional argument, which the court addressed by allowing Riley to amend his petition.
The court’s reasoning
The court held that it had jurisdiction to review the petition after granting Riley’s motion to amend it to include a challenge to his final administrative removal order. The court found that the Supreme Court’s decision in Riley v. Bondi contemplated that noncitizens seeking only withholding relief could file nominal appeals of their removal orders to preserve judicial review. On the merits, the court concluded the Board of Immigration Appeals misapplied the clear-error standard of review. The Board impermissibly reweighed evidence and substituted its own judgment for that of the Immigration Judge regarding the credibility of Riley’s testimony and the sufficiency of country conditions reports.
We conclude that the Board erred in this respect and therefore vacate and remand for further proceedings.
Opinion at 2
The dissent
I disagree. I see nothing in the Supreme Court’s decision permitting such acrobatics. And with respect, we should not sanction meritless petitions for review.
Quattlebaum
What it means going forward
The decision allows noncitizens in withholding-only proceedings to amend petitions to include nominal challenges to removal orders to secure judicial review of Convention Against Torture claims. It reinforces that the Board must defer to an Immigration Judge’s factual findings unless they are clearly erroneous.