United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 18-2826 ___________________________ Mirna Villegas Rendon, also known as Mirna Rendon Villegas Petitioner v. William P. Barr, Attorney General of the United States Respondent ____________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals ____________ Submitted: October 18, 2019 Filed: March 12, 2020 ____________ Before SMITH, Chief Judge, GRUENDER and BENTON, Circuit Judges. ____________ GRUENDER, Circuit Judge. Mirna Villegas Rendon petitions for review of a final order of removal issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”), following her appeal from an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) removal order denying her applications for asylum and withholding of removal. We deny the petition for review. I. Rendon, a native and citizen of Mexico, first entered the United States without inspection as a teenager in the late 1980s. She claims that she most recently reentered the United States in 2004 when returning from a roughly seven-month trip to Mexico by pretending to be asleep as the passenger in a vehicle crossing the border. On April 24, 2017, Rendon was convicted in Minnesota for fifth degree possession of a controlled substance, specifically methamphetamine and tramadol, in violation of Minnesota Statute section 152.025, subdivision 2(1). Thereafter, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) issued Rendon a notice to appear before an IJ, charging her with inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i) because she was an alien present in the United States without admission or parole and under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(II) because she was an alien convicted of a controlled substance offense. The notice to appear did not specify the time or date of the proceedings. Rendon then filed a motion to terminate the removal proceedings. In this motion, she argued that her crime was not a controlled substance offense for immigration purposes and that she had entered the United States legally in 2004. After a contested removability hearing in August 2017, the IJ issued an oral decision finding that Rendon failed to meet her burden of proof regarding the manner of her entry into the United States and therefore sustained the charge of inadmissibility under § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i). But in September 2017, the IJ issued a written decision declining to sustain the controlled substance removal charge under § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(II). At another hearing in November 2017, the IJ declined a request by Rendon to terminate removal proceedings by granting her military “parole in place.” Rendon claimed she qualified based on her 2007 marriage to a man who had served in the United States Navy and been discharged in 1992. Rendon also testified about past -2- sexual abuse she suffered as a child in Mexico, and her current husband testified that their family was reliant on Rendon. Then, in February 2018, the IJ issued a decision sustaining the removal charges and denying the applications for relief and protection. The IJ reconsidered her September 2017 decision regarding the controlled substance charge, reversed position, and instead sustained that charge. The IJ also found that Rendon’s application for asylum ...
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