Carlos Flores-Lopez v. Eric H. Holder Jr.

Carlos Alberto Flores-Lopez petitions for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) dismissing his appeal from an immigration judge’s decision finding that his conviction for resisting an executive officer in violation of section 69 of the California Penal Code (“CPC”) is a categorical crime of violence, rendering him removable under section 237(a)(2)(A)(iii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”X 8 U.S.C. § 1227 (a)(2)(A)(iii), as an alien convicted of an aggravated felony. We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. 1252(a)(2)(D), we grant the petition for review, and we remand to the BIA for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I

Flores-Lopez was born in El Salvador and was admitted to the United States as a legal permanent resident in 1992 on or around his eleventh birthday. In 2006, he pled guilty to resisting an executive officer in violation of CPC § 69 and was sentenced to one year and four months of imprisonment.

The procedural history of Flores-Lopez’s removal proceedings is somewhat convoluted. On February 6, 2007, the Immigration and Naturalization Service initiated removal proceedings against Flores-Lopez by filing a Notice to…