Solomon Nuru v. Merrick Garland


UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 19-1959 SOLOMON NURU, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, United States Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Argued: October 27, 2020 Decided: April 20, 2021 Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, and DIAZ and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges. Petition for review denied by unpublished opinion. Judge Diaz wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge Gregory and Judge Richardson joined. ARGUED: James Algernon Roberts, LAW OFFICE OF JAMES A. ROBERTS, Fairfax, Virginia, for Petitioner. Paul R. Perkins, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. ON BRIEF: Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Cindy S. Ferrier, Assistant Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, Sunah Lee, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. DIAZ, Circuit Judge: Solomon Nuru, an Ethiopian native and citizen, petitions for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order dismissing his appeal of an Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) decision ordering his removal. Nuru argues that he wasn’t removable because he has derivative asylee status as a beneficiary of an IJ’s grant of asylum to his mother. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) terminated his mother’s asylee status in 2013, which in turn terminated Nuru’s derivative status. And although Nuru’s mother was again granted asylum in 2018, that grant was based on a new asylum application that she filed in 2016. Nuru didn’t qualify for derivative asylee status when his mother filed her new asylum application because he was an adult at the time. And he didn’t seek any other relief from removal. The IJ thus correctly found Nuru removable, and the Board properly affirmed. We therefore deny Nuru’s petition for review. I. Nuru’s mother came to the United States from Ethiopia in November 2003 and applied for asylum through USCIS’s Asylum Office. The Asylum Office granted her application the following month. She subsequently petitioned for derivative asylee status for her minor children, one of whom was Nuru. The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) granted these petitions, and fourteen-year-old Nuru was admitted to the United States in 2006. 2 Five years later, USCIS issued a Notice of Intent to Terminate Nuru’s mother’s grant of asylum, suspecting fraud in her 2003 asylum application. See 8 C.F.R. § 208.24(a)(1) (“[A]n asylum officer may terminate a grant of asylum made under the jurisdiction of USCIS if, following an interview, the asylum officer determines that . . . [t]here is a showing of fraud in the alien’s application such that he or she was not eligible for asylum at the time it was granted.”). USCIS terminated Nuru’s mother’s asylee status in 2013, which likewise terminated Nuru’s derivative status. See 8 C.F.R. § 208.24(d) (“The termination of asylum status for a person who was the principal applicant shall result in termination of the asylum status of a spouse or child whose status was …

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