Jose Arturo Murillo-Salmeron v. Immigration and Naturalization Service

The decisions on review can best be described as two ships passing in the night. We are presented with a petition for review of a final deportation order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirming a decision that the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) did not make. We hold that the BIA committed legal error in deporting Petitioner based on his ineligibility for a waiver which, as the IJ noted in the very decision under review, was not required in the first place. While we recognize that the BIA is swimming in a sea of cases, barely able to keep itself afloat, there remains no excuse for the apparent failure to read the decision one is reviewing and to review the decision that was made.

I.

Jose Arturo Murillo-Salmeron (“Murillo”) left his native Mexico to emigrate to the United States in 1977, at the age of fifteen. He became a temporary lawful resident in 1989 under the INA’s legalization program.

During his twenty-five years in the United States, Murillo married a U.S. citizen and is raising three children and two stepchildren. Each of his children has individually petitioned the immigration court not to deport their father. Over the last three decades, Murillo’s parents and…