United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 22-1249 ___________________________ Eduardo Escobar Petitioner v. Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General of the United States and the Executive Office of Immigration Review Respondent ____________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals ____________ Submitted: October 18, 2022 Filed: December 15, 2022 ____________ Before SMITH, Chief Judge, BENTON and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges. ____________ SHEPHERD, Circuit Judge. Eduardo Escobar is a 31-year-old man alleged to be a native and citizen of Honduras present in the United States without being lawfully admitted. Escobar petitions for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) upholding the decision of an immigration judge (IJ) that found Escobar removable and denied his application for deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Having jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252, we deny the petition. I. Escobar entered the United States as a child but claims to know little about the circumstances of his birth or his entry into the country. Escobar has also struggled with mental illness, having been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he has a significant criminal record. While Escobar has offered little information about his past, the record indicates that he was brought to the United States as a young child by his mother, Maria Elsomina Escobar, a Honduran citizen. Soon after her entry into the United States in the early 1990s, Maria Escobar stole the identity of an American citizen named Maria Mateo. In 2013, Maria Escobar accepted a plea agreement on charges of possessing and falsifying immigration documents. In sworn statements included in her plea agreement, Maria Escobar stated that all but one of her children, including Eduardo Escobar, were born in Honduras. She also admitted that she was born in Honduras and has been residing illegally in the United States since she entered the country. Between 2010 and 2021, Eduardo Escobar sustained multiple convictions: a first-degree assault charge, two burglary charges, a drug possession charge, a felon- in-possession charge, and a second-degree robbery charge. In May 2021, after years of investigation, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiated removal proceedings against Escobar while he was serving a term of involuntary commitment at a Missouri mental health facility. In the Notice to Appear (NTA), DHS alleged that Escobar is a native and citizen of Honduras who entered the United States unlawfully at an unknown location and date. The NTA also detailed Escobar’s criminal history dating back to 2010: six charges resulting in an aggregate sentence of 16 years incarceration. The -2- NTA charged Escobar with removability under the Immigration and Nationality Act as an alien present in the United States without being admitted or paroled, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i); as an alien convicted of a controlled substance-related offense, id. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(II); and as an alien convicted of two or more offenses for which the aggregate sentence is five or more years of incarceration, id. § 1182(a)(2)(B). In June 2021, DHS added further grounds for removability …
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