Tovar-Rodriguez

MEMORANDUM ****

Andrea Tovar-Rodriguez petitions for review of a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals affirming without opinion the decision by an Immigration Judge denying her petition for cancellation of removal. We grant the petition and remand for further proceedings.

Tovar-Rodriguez contends that the IJ erred as a matter of law in concluding that she had not satisfied the continuous physical presence requirement under 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(b)(l)(A). Although the government has no record of it, pursuant to her testimony we will assume that the border patrol stopped Tovar-Rodriguez and turned her around at the border following her first attempt to reenter the United States after visiting her ailing father in Mexico for a week in 1992. The fact that an alien is turned around at the border does not in and of itself interrupt the continuity of her physical presence in the United States. See Tapia v. Gonzales, 430 F.3d 997 (2005). Because Tovar-Rodriguez successfully returned to her home in this country and resumed her life as a United States resident well within the 90 days provided in § 1229b(d)(2), the IJ erred in concluding that because she was turned around at the border…