Mercado-Zazueta

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Jose Luis Mercado-Zazueta (“Mercado”), a native and citi- zen of Mexico, entered the United States as a visitor in 1992, 12600 MERCADO-ZAZUETA v. HOLDER at the age of seven. With the exception of a brief 2005 vaca- tion, Mercado has remained in the country ever since. In 1992, his mother married Ramon Mercado Cuevas (“Ramon”), who had been a lawful permanent resident of the United States since 1983. Ramon legally adopted Mercado in 1998, when he was thirteen years old. Mercado obtained inde- pendent lawful permanent resident status in 2002, at the age of seventeen, and has three siblings: a U.S. citizen brother, a U.S. citizen sister, and a lawful permanent resident sister.

In 2006, Mercado pled guilty to one count of aggravated assault in the Superior Court of Arizona. See Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 13-1204. The United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) initiated removal proceedings against him shortly afterward. Mercado conceded removability under sec- tion 237 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(i)(I), as an alien “convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude commit- ted within five years . . . after the date of…