United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 20-1694 JONALSON DOR, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND,* Attorney General, Respondent. PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS Before Thompson, Howard, and Gelpí, Circuit Judges. Edward Crane, with whom Philip L. Torrey, Crimmigration Clinic, Harvard Law School, Shaiba Rather, Lena Melillo, and Katie Quigley, Law Student Advocates, Crimmigration Clinic, Harvard Law School, were on brief, for petitioner. Andrew B. Insenga, Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, with whom Jeffrey B. Clark, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, and Matthew B. George, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, were on brief, for respondent. * Pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 43(c)(2), Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has been substituted for former Attorney General William P. Barr. August 19, 2022 THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. Petitioner, Jonalson Dor ("Dor"), seeks judicial review of a Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA") decision affirming an immigration judge's ("IJ") decision to deny Dor's applications for relief from removal based on two marijuana offenses that the IJ and BIA found, for different reasons, to be "particularly serious" pursuant to 8 U.S.C. §§ 1158(b)(2)(A)(ii) and 1231(b)(3)(B)(ii). Before us, Dor argues that the BIA failed to conduct the appropriate analysis to reach its particularly-serious-crime conclusion. The government urges that we shouldn't even reach Dor's substantive challenges due to his petition's jurisdictional defects, but even if we can find our way to the merits, the government maintains the BIA's decision was correct. We find we have jurisdiction to review the petition. And, having undertaken that review, we remand to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. BACKGROUND We begin our work by recounting the relevant parts of Dor's story and reciting the procedural history that brought him to us, pulling all relevant facts from the administrative record. See Adeyanju v. Garland, 27 F.4th 25, 31 (1st Cir. 2022) (citing Martínez-Pérez v. Sessions, 897 F.3d 33, 37 n.1 (1st Cir. 2018)). Dor is a native and citizen of Haiti who was admitted to the United States as a legal permanent resident back in 2007. But - 3 - in April 2019, the Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings against Dor, charging him with removability as a non-citizen convicted of a criminal offense relating to a controlled substance. After a hearing, the IJ found Dor removable based on two 2016 Massachusetts state court convictions: one for distribution of $20 worth of marijuana, on May 20, and one for possession of what a police report says was "a large amount" (25 grams) of marijuana with the intent to distribute, on June 1. Dor then filed for various forms of relief, including applications for asylum, statutory withholding of removal, and withholding of removal pursuant to the United Nations Convention Against Torture.1 In a written decision denying Dor's applications for relief, the IJ found Dor ineligible for the relief he was seeking because his convictions were particularly serious crimes. By way of explanation, the IJ said …
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