Lopez-Velasquez

The district court dismissed the indictment against Edmundo Lopez-Velasquez for illegal reentry on the ground that the immigration judge (“IJ”) presiding over his deportation hearing had a duty to inform him of discretionary relief under § 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. See 8 U.S.C. § 1182 (c) (1994) (repealed 1996). Under the law as understood at the time of the hearing, Lopez-Velasquez was four years short of the mandatory seven-year domicile requirement for § 212(c) relief. Lopez-Velasquez contends that his domicile should have been calculated differently, in light of a case we decided a year after his hearing. But, even if we were to accept the calculation suggested by Lopez-Velasquez, he was still eight months short of eligibility.

We hold that an IJ’s duty is limited to informing an alien of a reasonable possibility that the alien is eligible for relief at the time of the hearing. While there may be narrow exceptions where an IJ has a duty to inform an alien of relief for which the alien will become eligible imminently, or where subsequent precedent renders a deportation order invalid, those circumstances are not presented here. Accordingly, we…