Al Haiki v. Gonzales

MEMORANDUM **

Al-Haiki petitions this court for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s decisión rejecting his asylum application as untimely and denying his applications for withholding of removal and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We deny the petition for review.

Petitioner failed to file his asylum application within one year of entering the country. He now argues that his untimely filing should be forgiven because “exceptional circumstances” barred him from applying at an earlier date. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158 (a)(2)(D) (allowing aliens to file untimely asylum applications in the case of extraordinary circumstances). 8 C.F.R. § 1208.4 (a)(5) provides a non-exhaustive list of extraordinary circumstances sufficient to merit relief. Petitioner concedes that the facts of his case fall outside the enumerated circumstances but argues that he nonetheless qualifies for relief. In order to be deemed “extraordinary,” the relevant circumstances must: 1) not be intentionally caused by the immigrant through his action or inaction; 2) be directly related to the failure to meet the one year deadline; and 3) be reasonable under the circumstances. Id.

Here,…