FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT SAZAR DENT, aka Cesar Augusto No. 17-15662 Jimenez-Mendez, Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. 2:10-cv-02673- v. GMS JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS III, Attorney General, OPINION Respondent-Appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona G. Murray Snow, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted July 10, 2018 San Francisco, California Filed August 17, 2018 Before: Susan P. Graber and Richard C. Tallman, Circuit Judges, and Ivan L.R. Lemelle,* District Judge. Opinion by Judge Graber * The Honorable Ivan L.R. Lemelle, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, sitting by designation. 2 DENT V. SESSIONS SUMMARY** Immigration The panel denied a petition for review insofar as it raised due process claims related to the district court’s rejection of Sazar Dent’s United States citizenship claim, and granted the petition and remanded to the Board of Immigration Appeals insofar as the BIA ruled that Dent’s conviction for third- degree escape under Arizona Revised Statutes § 13-2502 is a crime of violence aggravated felony. Dent was born in Honduras, but was admitted to the United States on the basis of being adopted by a United States citizen. His adoptive mother filed an application for naturalization for Dent, but that application was terminated after Dent and his mother missed scheduled interviews and he turned 18. Dent then filed his own naturalization application, but it was denied for failure to prosecute. After criminal convictions, Dent was placed in removal proceedings and the immigration judge and BIA found him removable for a controlled substance offense, and for having been convicted of an aggravated felony based on his conviction for third-degree escape. Dent petitioned for review with this court, which transferred the case to the District Court of Arizona for a hearing on his citizenship claim. The district court determined that Dent was not a United States citizen and ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. DENT V. SESSIONS 3 ultimately granted the government’s motion for summary judgment. As a preliminary matter, the panel concluded that Dent had standing to assert due process and equal protection claims on behalf of his mother. Dent claimed that the applicable citizenship statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1433 (1982), violated his mother’s rights under the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because the statute required citizen-parents of foreign-born, adopted children to petition for naturalization of their children, while biological parents, as well as adoptive parents who naturalized after adoption, could confer citizenship on their children automatically, without petitioning. The panel explained that, under Sessions v. Morales- Santana, 137 S. Ct. 1678 (2017), Dent’s equal protection claims do not necessarily receive rational basis review simply because they are in the immigration context; rather, when a petitioner presents a claim for citizenship, his or her equal protection claims are treated the same as they would be in a non-immigration case. However, the panel held that ...
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