In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 19-2375 HAIYAN CHEN, Petitioner, v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ____________________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. No. A089-283-398. ____________________ ARGUED MARCH 3, 2020 — DECIDED MAY 29, 2020 ____________________ Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Haiyan Chen, a citizen of China, entered the United States without inspection (that is, by stealth) in 2004. She was detected in 2010, and immigra- tion officials opened removal proceedings. The charging document is called a “Notice to Appear,” and a form with that caption was dated April 27, 2010. The form did not meet the statutory requirements for a Notice to Appear, however, because it omiaed the time and place for a hearing. See 8 2 No. 19-2375 U.S.C. §1229(a)(1)(G)(i); Pereira v. Sessions, 138 S. Ct. 2105 (2018). Immigration officials sent Chen a separate document, dated July 29, 2010, with that information. Chen appeared as ordered, and many other hearings followed. She asked for asylum, which an immigration judge denied on the ground that 8 U.S.C. §1158(a)(2)(B) gives aliens only one year after entering the United States to request that relief. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed her appeal on March 28, 2017, and we denied a petition for review. Chen v. Sessions, No. 17-1797 (7th Cir. Jan. 4, 2018) (nonprecedential). In September 2018 Chen filed a motion asking the Board to reopen her case so that she could seek cancellation of re- moval, a remedy available to some aliens who have lived in the United States for a decade. She recognized that the mo- tion was untimely—a statute allows only 90 days after the Board’s original decision, see 8 U.S.C. §1229a(c)(7)(C)(i)—but asked for the benefit of equitable tolling. She also recognized that she had not sought cancellation of removal during the original proceedings, even though they continued past the tenth anniversary of her arrival. She contended that, until the Supreme Court issued Pereira in June 2018, neither she nor her lawyers recognized that she might be eligible for that relief. Pereira opened their eyes, and Chen contended that she should receive its benefit. The potential bearing of Pereira is this: although an alien accumulates years of physical presence starting from the date of entry, two events stop the accumulation of time. 8 U.S.C. §1229b(d)(1). Commission of a crime that renders an alien inadmissible is one, and service of a Notice to Appear under §1229(a) is the other. Chen and her lawyer assumed that the document she received in April 2010 stopped the ac- No. 19-2375 3 crual of time, but Chen’s motion to reopen argued that Perei- ra holds otherwise and that the time continued to run— indeed, that it is still running, because §1229b(d)(1) does not make entry of a final removal order a stop-time event. The Board assumed without deciding that Chen is enti- tled to equitable tolling of the 90-day ...
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