Kiril Vidinski v. William P. Barr


NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit Chicago, Illinois 60604 Argued October 3, 2019 Decided October 28, 2019 Before DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge AMY C. BARRETT, Circuit Judge MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge No. 18-3413 KIRIL VIDINSKI, Petition for Review of an Order of the Petitioner, Board of Immigration Appeals. v. No. A096-533-945 WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ORDER An Immigration Judge found Kiril Vidinski, a citizen of Bulgaria, removable. Despite the fact that the removal order has now been carried out, Vidinski (as is his prerogative) is continuing to pursue his right to stay in the United States. In this action, his third challenge to the removal order, Vidinski argues that his proceedings have been void ab initio because they were based on a flawed Notice to Appear. The flaw was the absence of any information about the specific date and time for his hearing, in disregard of the statutory requirement to include that information. See 8 U.S.C. § 1229(a)(1)(G)(i). Those details were supplied later, in a supplemental notice. He also contends that the No. 18-3413 Page 2 Board of Immigration Appeals exceeded its authority by exploring the facts underlying his application for cancellation of removal at the motion-to-reopen stage. Unfortunately for Vidinski, we recently held in Ortiz-Santiago v. Barr, 924 F.3d 956 (7th Cir. 2019), that omission of date-and-time information from a Notice to Appear does not affect the tribunal’s jurisdiction. Instead, the requirement to include those details is a claim-processing rule that an alien may waive or forfeit. Vidinski did not timely object to the statutory defects in his notice, nor has he demonstrated that the Board erred by considering his stated factual basis for his latest request for cancellation of removal. We therefore deny his petition for review. I Vidinski overstayed a 1998 visa that expired the same year. He married a United States citizen in 2002, and in 2005 he applied to the Department of Homeland Security to adjust his status based on the marriage. Yet his tax returns during the marriage said he was single, and in early 2005 his former girlfriend from Bulgaria (who by that time lived in the United States) gave birth to their child. Although he divorced his citizen wife in 2009, Vidinski’s application remained pending until 2010, when immigration officials who were investigating a marriage- fraud ring interviewed her. She admitted that her marriage to Vidinski was a sham, that she had been paid to marry him, and that she had never lived with him. Armed with that information, the agency denied Vidinski’s application to adjust his status. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) then initiated removal proceedings and filed a Notice to Appear with the immigration court, charging that Vidinski was removable for overstaying his visa, see Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(B), and for attempting to procure an immigration benefit by marriage ...

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