PUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 19-2357 SOLOMAN TETTEH, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Submitted: January 29, 2021 Decided: April 27, 2021 Before WILKINSON, AGEE, and DIAZ, Circuit Judges. Petition dismissed in part and denied in part by published opinion. Judge Diaz wrote the opinion, in which Judge Wilkinson and Judge Agee joined. Bradley B. Banias, WASDEN BANIAS LLC, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, for Petitioner. Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General, Linda S. Wernery, Assistant Director, Walter Bocchini, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. DIAZ, Circuit Judge: Soloman Tetteh, a native and citizen of Ghana, was convicted of drug and firearm offenses in Georgia. The state later pardoned him, but not before the Department of Homeland Security sought to remove Tetteh based on his convictions. The Immigration Judge (“IJ”) ordered his removal, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) dismissed his appeal. Tetteh now argues that he can’t be removed for pardoned offenses. But Tetteh didn’t exhaust his argument that pardoned offenses don’t qualify as convictions under the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq. Moreover, a pardon waives only the removal grounds specifically enumerated in the Act, and Tetteh’s pardon doesn’t waive all of the removal grounds proven by the government. We thus dismiss in part and deny in part his petition for review. I. A. Tetteh entered the United States as a student and overstayed his visa. While living in Georgia, Tetteh pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, possessing marijuana, and possessing a firearm in the commission of a crime. A state court sentenced Tetteh to one- and three-year terms of probation to run concurrently. It also applied the Georgia First Offender Act, Ga. Code Ann. § 42-8-60, which defers a first-time offender’s judgment of guilt until he completes a probationary sentence, after which he “shall stand discharged . . . and shall be completely exonerated of guilt.” A.R. 152. 2 Tetteh subsequently applied to adjust his status from temporary to permanent resident. In that application, he averred that he had “not been arrested, convicted or confined in a prison,” and was not excludable on any grounds, including for being an alien “who ha[s] been convicted of a violation of any law or regulation relating to a narcotic drug or marihuana or who ha[s] been an illicit trafficker[]” in those substances. A.R. 407–08. Tetteh successfully obtained permanent resident status. Tetteh then completed his probationary sentence, and the state of Georgia discharged his offenses. B. More than twenty years later, the Department of Homeland Security matched the Georgia convictions to Tetteh and initiated removal proceedings. The government sought Tetteh’s removal on four grounds: 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i) for a controlled substance conviction, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(C) for a firearm conviction, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) for an aggravated felony conviction, 1 and 8 …
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