Delia Ramos Bona v. Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General, Delia Ramos Bona v. Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General

This case involves a woman who is a Philippine citizen whose husband has served for 19 years in the United States Navy and is a naturalized United States citizen. They have three children who are also now naturalized citizens. She arrived in the United States in 1991 with her three children as- endangered family members of a serviceman when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. She was placed in removal proceedings eight years later and denied the ability to apply for adjustment of status under an INS regulation because she was paroled into the United States at the time of her arrival in 1991. We hold in agreement with Succar v. Ashcroft, 394 F.3d 8 (1st Cir.2005), that the regulation is in conflict with the governing statute and is thus invalid. Under the statute she is entitled to apply for adjustment in the removal proceedings.

This case started with the best of intentions by our own government, with the evacuation of military personnel and their families from the Philippine islands under threat of an impending volcanic eruption. But the case quickly digressed into a series of unwise and misplaced discretionary decisions which ultimately led to an immigration judge entering…