Marez Torrez v. Gonzales

MEMORANDUM **

Eriberto Marez Torrez, a native and citizen of Mexico, petitions pro se for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ summary affirmance without opinion of an immigration judge’s pretermission of his application for cancellation of removal. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252 . We grant the petition for review and remand for further proceedings.

Marez Torrez contends that the IJ legally erred in determining that he failed to meet the ten-year continuous physical presence requirement of 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(b)(1)(A) due to a voluntary departure in 1995. Marez testified that upon attempting to return to the United States immigration officials stopped him and he agreed to voluntarily return to Mexico. At the IJ’s prompting, Marez Torrez further testified that he signed a voluntary departure form.

We recently held that the fact that an alien is turned around at the border, even where the alien is fingerprinted and information about his attempted entry is entered into the government’s computer database, does not in and of itself interrupt the continuity of his physical presence in the United States. See Tapia v. Gonzales, 430 F.3d 997, 1002-1004 (9th…