PUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 18-1850 JESUS HUMBERTO ZUNIGA ROMERO, Petitioner, v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Argued: May 8, 2019 Decided: August 29, 2019 Before AGEE, FLOYD, and THACKER, Circuit Judges. Petition for review granted by published opinion. Judge Agee wrote the opinion, in which Judge Floyd and Judge Thacker joined. ARGUED: Benjamin Ross Winograd, IMMIGRANT & REFUGEE APPELLATE CENTER, LLC, Alexandria, Virginia, for Petitioner. Rebecca Hoffberg Phillips, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. ON BRIEF: Georgeanna M. Gardner, GARDNER LAW, PLLC, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Petitioner. Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General, John S. Hogan, Assistant Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. AGEE, Circuit Judge: After an immigration judge (“IJ”) denied Jesus Zuniga Romero’s request for administrative closure of his case—which would have removed it from the IJ’s active docket pending the completion of a separate immigration proceeding—Romero petitioned the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) for review. Although the BIA initially sustained Romero’s appeal and administratively closed his case, it later dismissed the appeal after a precedential decision issued by the Attorney General in Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I. & N. Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018). In Castro-Tum, the Attorney General concluded that IJs and the BIA do not have the general authority to administratively close cases. Romero now brings a petition for review of the BIA’s decision to this Court. For the reasons we discuss below, we grant Romero’s petition for review, vacate the BIA’s decision, and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion. I. In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) commenced removal proceedings against Romero, a citizen of Honduras, for being present in the United States without being admitted or paroled. See 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(9)(B)(ii). Although Romero accepted a grant of voluntary departure at a hearing before an IJ in 2014, he subsequently sought and received reopening of his case after the IJ determined that Romero was the 2 beneficiary of a pending Form I-130 1 filed by his wife, who was then a lawful permanent resident (“LPR”). After the I-130 had been approved, Romero filed a motion for administrative closure, advising that his wife had since become a naturalized U.S. citizen and that he wished to file a Form I-601A 2 for a provisional unlawful presence waiver. In order to file the Form, the removal proceedings had to be administratively closed. See 8 C.F.R. § 212.7(e)(4)(iii). As discussed further below, administrative closure is a procedural mechanism primarily employed for the convenience of the adjudicator (namely, IJs and the BIA) in order to allow cases to be removed from the active dockets of immigration courts, often so that individuals can pursue alternate immigration remedies—such as, in Romero’s case, pursuing a provisional unlawful presence waiver. Romero advised that if his case 1 I-130 forms are used by U.S. citizens and LPRs to ...
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