Noemi Monges-Garcia v. Eric Holder, Jr.

MEMORANDUM

We dismissed this petition last year because Noemi Monges-Gareia failed to submit an opening brief. We reinstated the petition but must again dismiss because the opening brief doesn’t comply with our rules and fails to raise a specific and distinct challenge to the BIA’s order dismissing her appeal.

The opening brief is very nearly the same counsel submitted to us in 2004, before we remanded this case to the BIA. See Monges-Gareia v. Gonzales, 228 Fed.Appx. 665, 667 (9th Cir.2007). It adds a sentence and modifies another to tell us the agency was “incorrect” and “should be overruled,” but it’s otherwise cut-and-pasted from the previous filing. Our rules don’t allow parties to “append or incorporate by reference briefs submitted to ... this Court in a prior appeal,” 9th Cir. R, 28-1 (b), and this case shows why. Petitioner’s recycled brief raises an issue that was resolved before remand, fails to ad dress the agency’s latest decision and reasoning and doesn’t even cite 8 C.F.R. § 1003.23 (b)(1), the regulation we asked the BIA to interpret. So far as we can tell, petitioner’s attorney didn’t read the agency’s decision.

The government called Monges-Garcia’s attention…