PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ____________ No. 18-3750 ____________ NELSON QUINTEROS, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (Agency No. A079-029-001) Immigration Judge: John P. Ellington Argued on September 24, 2019 Before: MCKEE, AMBRO and ROTH, Circuit Judges (Opinion filed: December 17, 2019) Damon C. Andrews (ARGUED) Kirkland & Ellis 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20004 Alexa M. Siegel P.O. Box 65 Baldwin, MD 21013 Nathanael P. Kibler Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz 265 Brookview Centre Way Suite 600 Knoxville, TN 37828 Counsel for Petitioner Rachel L. Browning Virginia M. Lum, Esq. (ARGUED) United States Department of Justice Office of Immigration Litigation P.O. Box 878 Ben Franklin Station Washington, DC 20044 Counsel for Respondent OPINION 2 ROTH, Circuit Judge: This is a petition for review of a final order of removal. The Board of Immigration Appeals found that Nelson Quinteros committed an aggravated felony and failed to show entitlement to relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Quinteros argues that the Board committed two errors: First, the Board erred in finding that his conviction for conspiracy to commit assault with a dangerous weapon was an aggravated felony under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA); second, the Board erred in applying our precedent on the Convention Against Torture. For the reasons that follow, we will vacate the Board’s decision and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. I. Nelson Quinteros and his mother came to the United States from El Salvador in 2001, when he was eight-years-old. They settled in New York. When he was thirteen, Quinteros joined the gang MS-13. He has a New York Yankees tattoo that he asserts symbolizes that his particular gang is based in New York. In 2011, Quinteros was indicted for conspiracy to commit assault with a dangerous weapon under 18 U.S.C. § 1959(a)(6). Quinteros and other gang members discussed over the phone that they would assault members of Surenos, a rival gang. Quinteros drove other gang members to a Surenos location, but the Surenos “backed down.” 1 No assault took 1 AR 1057–58. 3 place. Quinteros later pled guilty to conspiracy to commit assault with a dangerous weapon. He was sentenced to thirty months’ imprisonment. In prison, Quinteros left MS-13 to follow Christianity. When he told other MS-13 members in prison that he was no longer in the gang, they would reply with statements like, “Well, when you get deported and you go back to El Salvador, things are going to change. There’s no getting out over there.” 2 When Quinteros’s sentence ended, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiated removal proceedings. DHS placed Quinteros in expedited proceedings after it determined that Quinteros had been convicted of an aggravated felony under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). In 2014, Quinteros was issued a Form I-851 Notice of Intent to Issue a Final Administrative Removal Order. The Form I-851 charged ...
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