NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 2 2019 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT ALEX COLORADO MORAN, AKA Alex No. 17-70508 Colorado, AKA Alex Moran Colorado, AKA Alex Moran, AKA Alex Antonio Agency No. A029-274-714 Moran, AKA Alex Colorado Moran, Petitioner, MEMORANDUM* v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted March 7, 2019 Pasadena, California Before: M. SMITH and OWENS, Circuit Judges, and SETTLE,** District Judge. Alex Colorado Moran petitions from the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirming the Immigration Judge’s (IJ) denial of his application for asylum, withholding of removal, deferral of removal under the * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Benjamin H. Settle, United States District Judge for the Western District of Washington, sitting by designation. Convention Against Torture (CAT), and adjustment of status. Moran also argues that he is eligible for relief under section 203 of the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA). We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 and deny the petition. 1. Contrary to Moran’s argument, his conviction under California Penal Code § 245(a)(1) is an aggravated felony. Our decision in United States v. Vasquez-Gonzalez, which held that a conviction under California Penal Code § 245(a)(1) “was categorically a crime of violence as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 16(a),” compels that conclusion. 901 F.3d 1060, 1068 (9th Cir. 2018). To be sure, Vasquez-Gonzalez addressed a version of the statute “[f]rom its enactment in 1993 to its amendment in 2011,” and expressly noted that “[t]he reorganized version of the statute is not before us.” Id. at 1068 & n.8. Moran was convicted under the reorganized statute. The amended subsection of the statute, however, criminalizes less conduct than the version of the statute analyzed in Vasquez-Gonzalez. Compare Cal. Penal Code § 245(a)(1) (1993) (criminalizing “assault . . . with a deadly weapon or instrument other than a firearm or by means of force likely to produce great bodily harm”), with Cal. Penal Code § 245(a)(1) (2012) (criminalizing “assault . . . with a deadly weapon or instrument other than a firearm”). Accordingly, because we held in Vasquez-Gonzalez that the conduct penalized by California Penal Code § 245(a)(1) (1993) is a crime of violence, so 2 too is the conduct penalized by the revised version of California Penal Code § 245(a)(1) under which Moran was convicted necessarily a crime of violence. Moran was sentenced to five years in prison. Accordingly, his conviction under California Penal Code § 245(a)(1) was an aggravated felony and a particularly serious crime. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F) (defining aggravated felony as “a crime of violence . . . for which the term of imprisonment [is] at least one year”); 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(B)(iv) (alien “who has been convicted of an aggravated felony (or felonies) ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals