FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT ELEN GRIGORYAN; SIRUN No. 16-73652 HARUTYUNYAN; ARTAVAZD GRIGORYAN; KAREN Agency Nos. GRIGORYAN, A075-748-697 Petitioners, A079-275-042 A079-275-043 v. A079-275-044 WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, OPINION Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted November 7, 2019 Pasadena, California Filed June 2, 2020 Before: Mary H. Murguia and Andrew D. Hurwitz, Circuit Judges, and Jack Zouhary, * District Judge. Opinion by Judge Murguia * The Honorable Jack Zouhary, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio, sitting by designation. 2 GRIGORYAN V. BARR SUMMARY ** Immigration Granting a petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals decision, and remanding, the panel held that the government violated petitioners’ due process rights by failing to provide them a full and fair opportunity to rebut the government’s fraud allegations before terminating their asylum status. The panel first rejected petitioners’ argument that the immigration judge lacked jurisdiction to terminate their asylum status. The panel explained that although Congress conferred exclusively on the Attorney General the authority to terminate asylum, the federal regulations specifically contemplate that an IJ may terminate asylum after notice is provided by DHS, and petitioners did not point to any statutory proscription of this notice requirement and regulatory framework. Because the government provided sufficient notice of the fraud allegations and request to terminate asylum, the panel concluded that the IJ had jurisdiction. The panel next held that despite having authority to terminate petitioners’ asylum status, the government did not afford petitioners due process in doing so. The panel concluded that the IJ’s admission of, and reliance on, a Record of Investigation (ROI), was fundamentally unfair and did not comport with constitutional due process, because ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. GRIGORYAN V. BARR 3 it did not provide petitioners with sufficient information about the fraud investigation, and thus failed to afford petitioners a meaningful opportunity to rebut its allegations. The panel explained that the single-page ROI referred to unnamed investigators and “exemplars” of documents that purportedly confirmed that some of the asylum application materials were fraudulent, but did not identify any of the named individuals, present supporting evidence to explain the nature of the investigation, produce the referenced exemplars, or proffer any government witnesses about the alleged fraud. In addition, the panel stated that the ROI’s indicia of reliability were further undermined because, notwithstanding their limited ability to rebut the report’s findings, petitioners were nonetheless able to show that half of the identified documents were not fraudulent. The panel stated that the mere fact that the ROI is a DHS document does not absolve the government from affording petitioners a fair opportunity to rebut its assertions. Lastly, the panel held that petitioners were prejudiced by the admission and consideration of the ROI, where the ROI was the only evidence DHS introduced ...
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