United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 18-3618 ___________________________ Ahmed Shariif Kassim Petitioner v. William P. Barr, Attorney General of the United States Respondent ____________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals ____________ Submitted: December 11, 2019 Filed: April 3, 2020 ____________ Before SMITH, Chief Judge, GRASZ and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________ STRAS, Circuit Judge. The overarching question in this case is whether the Board of Immigration Appeals applied its own standard of review correctly. After an immigration judge granted a waiver of inadmissibility and deferral of removal to Ahmed Shariif Kassim, the Board reversed both decisions. Kassim claims that, in doing so, the Board improperly supplanted the immigration judge’s findings with its own. We grant the petition for review in part, deny it in part, and remand. I. Kassim is a citizen of Somalia who arrived in the United States as a refugee in 2013. A little more than two years later, he pleaded no contest to two counts of misdemeanor fourth-degree sexual assault. The charges arose out of nonconsensual sexual contact with two teenage girls, and once convicted, he could no longer get a visa or enter the United States. See 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I) (discussing “crime[s] involving moral turpitude”). In fact, when Kassim tried to reenter the country after a short trip to Canada, the Department of Homeland Security detained him at the border and charged him as removable. Kassim concedes that he is removable but has requested two forms of relief. First, he asked for a waiver of inadmissibility that would allow him to become a lawful permanent resident of the United States. See id. § 1159(a), (c). Second, he requested deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture. See 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c); see also id. § 1208.17. After Kassim initially succeeded on both arguments before an immigration judge, the Board reversed and concluded that neither form of relief was available. II. We begin with the government’s argument that we lack jurisdiction to review the arguments raised in Kassim’s petition for review. In the government’s view, the criminal-alien bar applies because Kassim has been convicted of a “crime of moral turpitude” under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I), and the discretionary-relief bar “shield[s]” the Board’s discretionary decision to deny a waiver of inadmissibility from further review. Waldron v. Holder, 688 F.3d 354, 360 (8th Cir. 2012) (citation omitted); see 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(B)–(C); see also Brikova v. Holder, 699 F.3d -2- 1005, 1008 (8th Cir. 2012) (discussing the criminal-alien bar). On both points, we disagree. If these provisions applied, it is true that we would not be able to proceed any further. See Jima v. Barr, 942 F.3d 468, 471–72 (8th Cir. 2019); Waldron, 688 F.3d at 360. But both of these jurisdiction-stripping provisions have an exception for questions of law, see 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D); see also Mervil v. Lynch, 813 F.3d 1108, 1109–10 (8th Cir. 2016) (criminal-alien bar); Yohannes v. Holder, 585 F.3d 402, 405 (8th ...
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