Jose Velasquez v. Kirstjen Nielsen


Case: 18-40140 Document: 00514702176 Page: 1 Date Filed: 10/29/2018 IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit No. 18-40140 FILED Summary Calendar October 29, 2018 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk JOSE LUIS VELASQUEZ; HERLINDA VELASQUEZ, Plaintiffs - Appellants v. KIRSTJEN M. NIELSEN, SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; L. FRANCIS CISSNA, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; MARIO ORTIZ, District Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; NORMA A. LIMON, Field Office Director; JESSE MENDEZ, former Supervisory Adjudications Officer; RON ROSENBERG, Acting Chief of Administrative Appeals Office; JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS, III, U. S. ATTORNEY GENERAL; RYAN PATRICK, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Defendants - Appellees Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas USDC No. 1:15-CV-43 Before JOLLY, COSTA, and HO, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM:* * Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. R. 47.5.4. Case: 18-40140 Document: 00514702176 Page: 2 Date Filed: 10/29/2018 No. 18-40140 Jose Luis Velasquez and Herlinda Velasquez appeal the district court’s judgment dismissing their suit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and a number of related official actors. They seek a declaration that United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials erred, first, in rejecting Mr. Velasquez’s applications for waiver of grounds of inadmissibility and adjustment of status, and second, in rejecting their request for additional review of Mr. Velasquez’s applications. They also appeal the district court’s dismissal of their claim for a declaration that DHS violated appellants’ rights under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) based on its untimely response to their document request. Because the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear these claims, we AFFIRM. I. Mr. Velasquez, a native of El Salvador, entered the United States illegally at an unknown time in the 1970s. He was later detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), but released on bond on September 1, 1983. While out on bond Mr. Velasquez was arrested, charged, and convicted of voluntary manslaughter, for which he was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment. He was deported to El Salvador in 1986. Mr. Velasquez illegally re-entered the United States and voluntarily departed in 1989. In 1993, Mr. Velasquez applied for a visa in his name (but falsely claiming Mexican nationality) and entered the United States. In 1999, Leticia Leal-De Velasquez filed a Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, claiming that she and Mr. Velasquez had been married in Texas earlier that year. She also claimed that Mr. Velasquez was born in Mexico. He later applied for and obtained a multiple-entry visa to enter the United States to pursue adjustment of status using a (presumably false) Mexican birth certificate. Because of his conviction for voluntary manslaughter, Mr. Velasquez was first required to obtain a waiver of his criminal ground of inadmissibility 2 Case: 18-40140 Document: 00514702176 Page: ...

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