UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ERNEST NGONGA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Civil Action No. 17-2828 (JEB) JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS III, Attorney General for the United States, et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION Plaintiffs Ernest Ngonga and Danny Fokou, a married couple residing in Lovettsville, Virginia, seek a reversal of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Washington Field Office’s denial of Ngonga’s visa petition on behalf of Fokou. When the Field Office Director determined that Fokou’s prior marriage had been entered into for the purposes of obtaining an immigration benefit, she denied Ngonga’s Form I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative), a decision later affirmed by the Board of Immigration Appeals. See Compl., ¶¶ 1-2. Plaintiffs responded by filing this suit in December 2017, contending that such denial was arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and unsupported by “substantial and probative evidence” of marriage fraud. Id., ¶ 1. Defendants — the Attorney General, the Washington Field Office Director, the District Director of the Department of Homeland Security for that Field Office, the Secretary of DHS, and the Director of USCIS — now move to transfer this case to the Eastern District of Virginia. As the relevant factors favor transfer, the Court will grant Defendants’ Motion. 1 I. Background According to the Complaint and its attached exhibit, Plaintiffs Danny Fokou, a native and citizen of Cameroon, and Ernest Ngonga, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, are a married couple with three children who live in Lovettsville, Virginia. See Compl., ¶ 12. Fokou was previously married to Valery Keyi, a naturalized United States citizen and native of Cameroon. Id., ¶ 14; ECF No. 1-2 (Petition Decisions) at 7. At the time of her marriage to Keyi in May 2008, Fokou was pregnant with Ngonga’s second child. See Compl., ¶ 14. After Keyi filed and subsequently withdrew an I-130 Petition for Fokou in 2009, she was temporarily placed in removal proceedings. See Petition Decisions at 9. Keyi and Fokou divorced in July 2010, and Plaintiffs married that September. Id. Ngonga then filed an I-130 Petition on behalf of Fokou in December 2010, seeking to have her “classified as the spouse of a lawful permanent resident under section 203(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” Id. at 5, 9. In USCIS’s evaluation of this application, it discovered Fokou’s prior marriage to Keyi. Although Plaintiffs maintain that that marriage was “bona fide” and “for love, [and] for no other reason,” Compl., ¶ 14, Kimberly Zanotti, the USCIS Washington Field Office Director, apparently saw it differently. Citing Ngonga’s statement in his 2014 naturalization interview that Fokou had married Keyi for immigration purposes, as well as discrepancies in Keyi’s withdrawn I-130 Petition and purported irregularities in Fokou and Keyi’s marriage, Zanotti determined that the marriage was “entered into . . . for the sole purpose of circumventing immigration laws of the United States.” Petition Decisions at 10. Ngonga’s I- 130 Petition was consequently denied on June 2, 2017, pursuant to Section 204(c) of ...
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