United States Court of Appeals FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT Argued March 17, 2023 Decided June 23, 2023 No. 22-5009 KRISTEN H. COLINDRES AND EDVIN A. COLINDRES JUAREZ, APPELLANTS v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, ET AL., APPELLEES Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 1:21-cv-00348) Christopher W. Dempsey argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellants. Catherine M. Reno, Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellees. With her on the brief were Brian M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and T. Monique Peoples, Senior Litigation Counsel. Before: SRINIVASAN, Chief Judge, WALKER, Circuit Judge, and RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judge. Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALKER. 2 Opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment filed by Chief Judge SRINIVASAN. WALKER, Circuit Judge: Edvin Colindres Juarez applied for a visa to enter the United States. But the Government de- nied his application, fearing that he was part of a criminal or- ganization. Mr. Colindres and his wife — who is an American citi- zen — filed this suit to challenge that decision. But their suit faced an uphill struggle: With narrow exceptions, a court may not review the government’s decision to deny a visa. To show that their suit fits within an exception, the Colin- dreses point to a rule allowing American citizens to challenge visa denials that burden their constitutional rights. Mrs. Colin- dres says the rule applies here because denying her husband a visa interfered with her constitutional right to marriage. The district court rejected that argument and dismissed. We affirm. Though marriage is a fundamental right, it does not include the right to live in America with one’s spouse. So the right is not burdened when the government denies a spouse’s visa application. Plus, even if the exception applied, allowing us to review the Government’s visa denial, Mrs. Colindres’s challenge would fail on the merits. To survive judicial review, the Gov- ernment need only cite a statute listing a factual basis for deny- ing a visa. It did that here. 3 I. Background Mr. Colindres was born and raised in Guatemala. He en- tered the United States “without inspection” when he was four- teen. Colindres v. United States Department of State, 575 F.Supp.3d 121, 127 (D.D.C. 2021). For more than twenty years, he made his life in America — he got a job working for a pool company, married an American citizen named Kristen, and had a daughter. But for all that time, Mr. Colindres did not have permission to live or work in the United States. So in 2015, he decided to fix his immigration status. To do that, he first filed an Application for Provisional Un- lawful Presence Waiver. Aliens like Mr. Colindres who are “unlawfully present” in the United States for more than six months are “ineligible to receive visas and ineligible to be ad- mitted to the United States.” 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a), (a)(9)(B)(i). An Unlawful Presence …
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