In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 19-1669 ALEJANDRO SALAZAR-MARROQUIN, Petitioner, v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ____________________ On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. No. A089-283-631. ____________________ ARGUED DECEMBER 18, 2019 — DECIDED AUGUST 13, 2020 ____________________ Before HAMILTON, BRENNAN, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Under immigration law, it can make a big difference whether a non-citizen entered the United States legally or not. For petitioner Alejandro Salazar- Marroquin and his family, the difference is whether his mar- riage to a United States citizen makes him at least legally eli- 2 No. 19-1669 gible for an adjustment of status that might allow him to re- main in the United States lawfully. 8 U.S.C. § 1255(a). If he is not eligible and is removed after having failed to appear for his removal hearing in 2011, he will be inadmissible to the United States for five years after his removal. 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(B). The question of how petitioner entered the United States can be reached, however, only if petitioner can overcome sev- eral procedural obstacles, so we need to review the progress of his case in some detail. We conclude that under Fuller v. Whitaker, 914 F.3d 514 (7th Cir. 2019), petitioner is entitled to have the Board of Immigration Appeals take a fresh look at his motion to have his case reopened based on evidence that he entered legally, despite the generally applicable time-and- number limits on motions to reopen. I. Factual and Procedural Background Petitioner Salazar-Marroquin is a Mexican citizen. He says that he entered the United States with a B-2 visitor’s visa in 2000 when he was 16 years old, but he stayed despite the ex- piration of his visa. In 2010 he was arrested for driving with- out a license and was referred to the Department of Home- land Security. The Department personally served petitioner with a No- tice to Appear charging him as removable as an alien present in the United States without having been properly admitted. See 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i). The Notice to Appear con- tained what was at the time standard boilerplate language. Instead of specifying a time and date for his removal hearing, it said only “to be set.” See Ortiz-Santiago v. Barr, 924 F.3d 956, No. 19-1669 3 958 (7th Cir. 2019) (describing process by which time-and- date information is provided later in a Notice of Hearing). Petitioner then received two Notices of Hearing, causing confusion, he says, that led him to miss his removal hearing. The first notice, sent in August 2010, a month after the Notice to Appear, set his removal hearing for January 10, 2012, more than a year later. The second, sent in January 2011, re-set the hearing for an earlier date, February 15, 2011, only five weeks after the notice. Petitioner failed to show up at the rescheduled hearing. He was ordered removed in absentia. The ...
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