Background
Lizbeyde Yanez Piedra, a Mexican citizen and lawful permanent resident, was convicted in North Carolina of two counts of common-law forgery and possession of marijuana. After returning from a 2013 trip to Mexico, she was placed in removal proceedings and conceded inadmissibility based on controlled-substance and moral-turpitude convictions. An immigration judge denied her request for a waiver of inadmissibility but granted voluntary departure.
While her appeal was pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals, a North Carolina court vacated the marijuana conviction and the state dismissed the charge. Yanez Piedra sought a remand, but the Board applied Matter of Pickering and treated the conviction as continuing to have immigration consequences because it had not been vacated for a substantive or procedural defect. The Board therefore concluded that she could not establish eligibility for a controlled-substance waiver and declined to reach her other arguments.
The Court’s Holding
The Fourth Circuit held that a conviction vacated by a court cannot establish that a noncitizen is an “alien convicted of” an offense under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i). Exercising independent judgment after Loper Bright, the court read that language as describing current legal status rather than the historical fact that a conviction once existed. It also relied on the background principle that a vacated judgment lacks prospective legal effect.
The court rejected the Board’s Pickering framework as inconsistent with this statute. Neither the statutory text nor the federal definition of “conviction” makes a vacated conviction’s continuing effect depend on why the state court vacated it. Because Yanez Piedra’s marijuana conviction had been vacated, the Board committed legal error by relying on it to deny remand.
The court separately rejected Yanez Piedra’s Administrative Procedure Act challenge to regulations automatically terminating voluntary departure when a petition for review is filed and allowing a 30-day departure grace period. It found the scheme reasonable in light of voluntary departure’s quid-pro-quo character and the Attorney General’s broad regulatory authority. The petition was therefore granted in part and denied in part, with questions the Board had not addressed—including the effect of Yanez Piedra’s removability concession, the relevant timing inquiry, and other possible statutory grounds—left for the agency in the first instance.
Key Takeaways
- Under § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i), a vacated conviction does not establish that a noncitizen is currently an “alien convicted of” the covered offense.
- The Fourth Circuit declined to follow Matter of Pickering because the statute provides no basis for distinguishing among convictions according to the reason for vacatur.
- The regulations terminating voluntary departure upon the filing of a petition for review, while providing a 30-day grace period, are not arbitrary and capricious.
Why It Matters
The decision marks a significant post-Loper Bright departure from the approach adopted by the Board and several other circuits. Within the Fourth Circuit, immigration authorities may not rely on a vacated conviction to establish inadmissibility under § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i), even when the conviction was vacated for rehabilitation, immigration hardship, or another reason unrelated to an underlying defect.
The ruling is limited to the statutory provision before the court. It does not decide how vacated convictions operate under differently worded immigration statutes or how expunged, set-aside, or otherwise modified convictions should be treated.