Case: 17-40944 Document: 00514987059 Page: 1 Date Filed: 06/07/2019 IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit No. 17-40944 FILED June 7, 2019 Lyle W. Cayce DOLORES MARGARITA GONZALEZ, Clerk Plaintiff - Appellant v. NORMA A. LIMON, Harlingen Field Office Director, Citizenship and Immigration; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Defendants - Appellees Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas Before HIGGINBOTHAM, SMITH, and GRAVES, Circuit Judges. PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge: The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) denied Dolores Margarita Gonzalez a certificate of citizenship, first in 2008, then again in 2016. Gonzalez challenged only the agency’s 2016 denial. The Government argues Gonzalez’s challenge is untimely, that the relevant five- year limitations period runs from the first of her denials. Finding Gonzalez’s action untimely, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of her claim. I. Gonzalez was born in 1962 in Tamaulipas, Mexico to an American father and a Mexican mother. Her parents were not married at the time, but entered Case: 17-40944 Document: 00514987059 Page: 2 Date Filed: 06/07/2019 No. 17-40944 a putative marriage in 1972. In 1983, Gonzalez filed an application for a certificate of citizenship with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). In 1984, INS determined that Gonzalez was legitimated when her parents were married, and that she thereby acquired United States citizenship through her father. The agency issued Gonzalez a certificate of citizenship. In 1991, however, INS notified Gonzalez it intended to cancel the certificate of citizenship issued seven years earlier. In the intervening years, INS had discovered that Gonzalez’s father “had an unterminated marriage when he married [her] mother . . . rendering the [latter] marriage . . . invalid,” such that Gonzalez was not legitimated. The agency provided an opportunity for Gonzalez to rebut the finding, but she did not respond. Gonzalez claims she never received the 1991 letter. No action was taken for fifteen years. Then, in 2006, INS’s successor agency, USCIS, issued an order for the surrender and cancellation of Gonzalez’s certificate of citizenship. Gonzalez surrendered her certificate and immediately filed a motion for reconsideration with the agency. In this motion, Gonzalez argued the cancellation was procedurally defective: she had not received INS’s 1991 letter and therefore was denied an opportunity to contest its findings. She also argued she had been properly legitimated under the applicable Mexican law as the child of parents who entered a putative marriage in good faith. On September 2, 2008, USCIS determined that its cancellation decision was proper, and dismissed Gonzalez’s motion (the “2008 Denial”). Gonzalez did not pursue an administrative appeal. On May 28, 2014, Gonzalez filed a new motion with USCIS, advancing a new basis for the reconsideration of USCIS’s decision, namely that she had been legitimated by her father’s sworn acknowledgement of paternity. Gonzalez attached evidence in support of this argument: Social Security records indicating the receipt of benefits as her father’s recognized daughter 2 Case: 17-40944 Document: ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals