United States v. Samuel Frias-Flores

MEMORANDUM

Appellant Samuel Frias-Flores was convicted for illegal reentry into the United States under 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (a) and was sentenced to thirty-three months in prison. Frias-Flores brought a § 1326(d) collateral attack, challenging the deportation proceeding underlying his § 1326(a) conviction as being constitutionally deficient. We find that Frias-Flores’s due process rights were violated by defects in the deportation proceeding and that Frias-Flores does state a plausible claim for relief. We reverse Frias-Flores’s § 1326(a) conviction.

To successfully challenge the underlying deportation hearing, Frias-Flores must (1) have “exhausted any administrative remedies that may have been available to seek relief against the order”; (2) demonstrate that “the deportation proceedings at which the order was issued improperly deprived the alien of the opportunity for judicial review”; and (3) demonstrate that “the entry of the order was fundamentally unfair.” 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (d).

This court has held that an alien “is exempted from the exhaustion bar” and “was deprived of the opportunity for meaningful judicial review” where the IJ “did not inform [the alien] that he was eligible…