FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT JIM ROUTE, No. 19-72854 Petitioner, Agency No. v. A215-927-145 MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, OPINION Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted April 13, 2021 Pasadena, California Filed May 6, 2021 Before: MILAN D. SMITH, JR. and SANDRA S. IKUTA, Circuit Judges, and KATHRYN H. VRATIL, * District Judge. Opinion by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. * The Honorable Kathryn H. Vratil, United States District Judge for the District of Kansas, sitting by designation. 2 ROUTE V. GARLAND SUMMARY ** Immigration Denying Jim Route’s petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals concluding that he was removable for having been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude (CIMT) within five years after the date of admission, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(i), the panel deferred to the BIA’s interpretation of the phrase “date of admission” as referring to the date of the admission by virtue of which the individual was present when he or she committed the relevant crime. Route, a citizen of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), was admitted to the United States in 2005 and again in 2015. In 2018, he was convicted of unlawful imprisonment in the first degree, in violation of Hawai‘i law. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(i), an individual is removable if he or she is convicted of a CIMT within five years after the “date of admission,” and is convicted of a crime for which a sentence of one year or longer may be imposed. The BIA concluded that Route’s offense constituted a qualifying CIMT, and that it rendered him removable because he was convicted within five years of his 2015 admission. The BIA relied on its published decision in Matter of Alyazji, 25 I. & N. Dec. 397 (BIA 2011), in which it held that “date of admission,” in the context of § 1227(a)(2)(A)(i), refers to the “date of the admission by ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. ROUTE V. GARLAND 3 virtue of which the alien was present in the United States when he committed his crime.” Although the BIA’s decision in Route’s case was unpublished, the panel concluded that it was eligible for deference pursuant to Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), because it was directly controlled by a published decision, namely Alyazji. At step one of Chevron, the panel concluded the phrase “date of admission” is ambiguous, explaining that the statute makes no attempt to distinguish which admission is the relevant one when there are multiple admissions. At step two of Chevron, the panel held that the BIA’s interpretation in Alyazji was reasonable, noting that the BIA: 1) employed traditional tools of statutory interpretation; 2) considered alternative interpretations; 3) rejected the interpretation that would focus on the first admission as …
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