NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ____________ No. 20-2308 ____________ ORLANDO FERNANDEZ TAVERAS, a/k/a Orlando Fernandez, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ____________ On Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (A035-362-472) Immigration Judge: Andrew R. Arthur ____________ Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) (March 22, 2021) Before: HARDIMAN, GREENAWAY, JR., and BIBAS, Circuit Judges. (Filed: April 8, 2021) ___________ OPINION * ____________ * This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. HARDIMAN, Circuit Judge. Orlando Fernandez Taveras petitions for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) denying his motion to reopen and terminate removal proceedings. We will deny the petition. I The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began removal proceedings against Fernandez Taveras, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, because he was twice convicted of petit larceny under New York law. Fernandez Taveras’s counsel conceded that he was removable based on his convictions, admitting the offenses were crimes involving moral turpitude under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(ii). An immigration judge found Fernandez Taveras removable but granted his request for a waiver of inadmissibility and his application for adjustment of status. DHS appealed, and in 2012 the BIA reversed the immigration judge’s decision and ordered Fernandez Taveras removed. In re Fernandez Taveras, 25 I. & N. Dec. 834 (B.I.A. 2012). In 2013, we denied Fernandez Taveras’s petition to review the BIA’s decision, and the Supreme Court denied certiorari in March 2014. Taveras v. Att’y Gen., 731 F.3d 281 (3d Cir. 2013), cert. denied sub nom. Fernandez-Taveras v. Holder, 572 U.S. 1016 (2014) (mem.). DHS removed Fernandez Taveras to the Dominican Republic a little over a week later. In September 2019, Fernandez Taveras moved to reopen and terminate his removal proceedings, seven years after the 90-day deadline to do so following the final removal order. See 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(c)(7)(C)(i). He argued that the attorneys who 2 represented him in the earlier proceedings provided ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to contest that his New York petit larceny convictions were crimes involving moral turpitude. He claimed that his previous lawyers’ mistake “only came to his attention after the Immigrant Defense Project informed him of the [BIA]’s decision in Matter of Diaz-Lizarraga, 26 I. & N. Dec. 847 (BIA 2016) and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Obeya v. Sessions, 884 F.3d 442 (2d Cir. 2018).” A.R. 53. The latter held that a New York petit larceny conviction was not a crime involving moral turpitude under the law that applied during Fernandez Taveras’s deportation proceeding. Obeya, 884 F.3d at 444–46, 450 (declining to retroactively apply the BIA’s newly expanded definition of a crime involving moral turpitude). Fernandez Taveras asked the BIA to equitably toll the deadline for moving to reopen because of the ineffective legal assistance he received, contending that he exercised due diligence in filing his motion “in a …
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