Sammy Gichuhi v. Attorney General United States


NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _____________ No. 18-2404 _____________ SAMMY MUNGAI GICHUHI, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent _____________ On Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (Agency No. A099-256-505) Immigration Judge: Walter A. Durling ___________ Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) April 14, 2020 ___________ Before: CHAGARES, SCIRICA, and ROTH, Circuit Judges. (Filed: July 17, 2020) ___________ OPINION * ___________ * This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and, pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7, does not constitute binding precedent. CHAGARES, Circuit Judge. Sammy Mungai Gichuhi petitions for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirming an Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) denial of his application for cancellation of removal. For the following reasons, we will dismiss the petition for lack of jurisdiction. I. We write for the parties and so recount only the facts necessary to our decision. Gichuhi is a citizen of Kenya who first entered the United States in 1998 on a visitor visa. In 2004, he married Erica Jones, a U.S. citizen. In 2006, Gichuhi applied for adjustment of status based on an alien relative petition filed by his wife. Gichuhi listed no children on his application. The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) granted his application in 2008. In 2012, Gichuhi filed a naturalization application on which he listed two children. Gichuhi indicated that his children were born in 1995 and 2003 — before he married Jones and well before he submitted his adjustment application. In 2014, Gichuhi was convicted of making a false statement on his naturalization application. Specifically, he was convicted of falsely indicating that he had been married to and living with his wife, Jones, for three years prior to his application. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services then denied Gichuhi’s naturalization application because (1) he failed to respond to a second request for evidence and (2) he was not a lawfully admitted permanent resident because he had obtained permanent resident status through a fraudulent marriage. 2 In September 2016, Gichuhi was detained by DHS upon reentering the United States after foreign travel. DHS charged Gichuhi with removability based on his conviction for making a false statement on his naturalization application, which qualifies as a crime involving moral turpitude. The IJ sustained the charge, and Gichuhi sought cancellation of removal under 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(a). Before the IJ, the Government argued that Gichuhi was not eligible for cancellation of removal because he had made a willful and material misrepresentation in his adjustment application by omitting the fact that he had two children with a woman other than Jones. The Government contended that this omission shut off a line of inquiry into Gichuhi’s adjustment application that could have resulted in his application being denied. As a result, the Government alleged, Gichuhi was inadmissible at the time he adjusted to permanent resident status, and thus ineligible for cancellation of removal now. The IJ concluded ...

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