Case: 20-60936 Document: 00516118808 Page: 1 Date Filed: 12/06/2021 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit FILED December 6, 2021 No. 20-60936 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk Ahmed Elsayed Mahm Ibrahim, Petitioner, versus Merrick Garland, U.S. Attorney General, Respondent. Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals No. A 209 768 382 Before King, Smith, and Haynes, Circuit Judges. Jerry E. Smith, Circuit Judge: Ahmed Ibrahim is an Egyptian national and lawful permanent resident of the United States. Several years ago, he sent a picture of his genitals to someone who identified herself as a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl. For that conduct, he pleaded guilty of violating Section 14:81 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes, which proscribes “Indecent behavior with juveniles.” That plea led the Attorney General to institute removal proceedings. After a long and complex procedural history, the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) ordered Ibrahim removed to Egypt. He petitions for review. Be- cause any errors the BIA made were harmless, we deny the petition. Case: 20-60936 Document: 00516118808 Page: 2 Date Filed: 12/06/2021 No. 20-60936 I. Ibrahim committed his crime in June 2016. Later that year, Louisiana charged him with “Computer-aided solicitation of a minor” under Sec- tion 14:81.3 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes. Ibrahim ultimately avoided a trial on that charge by submitting a guilty plea in August 2017. Importantly, however, he pleaded guilty of committing a different crime—“indecent be- havior with a juvenile” under Section 14:81—for which he received a sus- pended sentence of five years at hard labor and was required to register as a sex offender. Shortly thereafter, the Attorney General took Ibrahim into custody and instituted removal proceedings. Based on his Section 14:81 plea, the government alleged that Ibrahim had been convicted of an “aggravated fel- ony” and a “crime of child abuse”—thus making him removable under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) and (E)(i), respectively. Ibrahim’s bond hearing and initial removal hearing were held on the same day in late October before the same immigration judge (“I.J.”). That is when the first error relevant to this petition occurred. During the bond hearing, the government introduced evidence of Ibrahim’s Section 14:81 plea in the form of criminal-court minutes. Under immigration regulations, bond proceedings and removal proceedings are supposed to be separate from one another. 1 So, the government should have formally resubmitted the criminal- court minutes at the start of the removal hearing, but it never did (probably 1 See 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(c)(1)(A) (“At the conclusion of the [removal] proceeding the immigration judge shall decide whether an alien is removable from the United States. The determination of the immigration judge shall be based only on the evidence produced at the hearing.”); 8 C.F.R. § 1003.19(d) (“Consideration by the Immigration Judge of an application or request of a respondent regarding custody or bond under this section shall be separate and apart from, and shall form no part of, any deportation or removal hearing or …
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