Christine Lumeno v. Eric Holder, Jr.

MEMORANDUM

Christine Lumeno petitions this court for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) denial of her asylum application as time-barred. We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 , and we deny the petition in part and dismiss in part.

1. Substantial evidence supports the BIA’s conclusion that the circumstances related to Lumeno’s failure to file her asylum application within a reasonable period after the BIA’s dismissal of her husband Feng Chen’s appeal were intentionally created by Lumeno through her own inaction. See 8 C.F.R. § 1208.4 (a)(5).

The relevant period of time is between August 2006, the date of the BIA’s dismissal of Chen’s appeal and the final denial of Lumeno’s derivative asylum application, and February 2008, when Lumeno was placed into removal proceedings and thus bound by the immigration court’s filing deadlines. See 8 C.F.R. § 208.2 (b). Lumeno testified that her husband’s attorney estimated in August 2005 that the appeal process could take “18-24 months or longer,” but she alleges she did not learn about the BIA’s denial until her husband was arrested in February 2008, nearly 30 months after Chen’s appeal was filed. Chen had made “many”…