Although the BIA found that Lordes missed his prior court date due to ineffective assistance of counsel, the BIA and the IJ concluded that this ineffective assistance of counsel “did not effect the respondent’s untimely filing of his asylum application”. The First Circuit found that as no legal or constitutional defect was properly raised by Lordes, the Court of Appeals has no jurisdiction to review the BIA/IJ finding that there was no excuse for the untimely asylum filing. The Court found that under its decision in Hana v. Gonzalez, 503 F.3d 39 (1st Cir. 2007 ), there was no merits to Lordes’s argument that the jurisdictional bar in 1158(a)(3) violates due process. Furthermore, the First Court found that there was no past or future persecution demonstrated, meaning that Lordes was not eligible for withholding of removal. Finally, the court held that there had been no evidence presented that Lordes would suffer harm or torture at the hand of the Brazilian government, therefore, CAT relief was also appropriately denied.
The First Circuit found that Sinurat failed to establish both past persecution and an objectively reasonable fear of future persecution on account of his religious views and practices. While Sinurat tried to argue that since the IJ stated it was “unclear” if in 1992 when Sinurat was in high school, an attack by Muslim high school students was because Sinurat was Christian or because of school rivalries, the de novo standard is required. However, the Court concluded that since the IJ and BIA both conclude that regardless of the students’ motive, this one time incident did not amount to past persecution, there was no merit in Sinurat’s argument. Finally the Court concluded that IJ and BIA “reasonably found no connection between the Indonesian government’s treatment of Christians generally and the isolated attack on Sinurat.”
The Court found that Alexandrescu had not suffered economic deprivation in being demoted and eventually asked to leave his military position as he “lost his job, not his ability to make a living”. In rejecting Alexandrescu’s argument that he had established a fear of future persecution based on his fear of being imprisoned for failing to inform the military of his whereabouts as required by Romanian law, the Court stated that generally, “a sovereign nation’s normal penalties for avoiding military service are not considered persecution.” Finally, the Court held that Alexandrescu provided no proof of who specifically would seek to persecute him on account of any protected ground.
Finding both that Aronov was the prevailing party, that the government was not substantially justified in the delay and that the government was not entitled to Chevron deference, the First Circuit upheld the district court’s order granting Aronov’s EAJA application. The Court found that the District Court was correct in holding that there was “a material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties” since Aronov went from being an LPR to a USC and that there was a “judicial imprimatur on the change” as it was the order of the court remanding Aronov’s case back to USCIS so that it could grant his naturalization by a set date.
Furthermore, the Court rejected the government’s argument that the delay was substantially justified. The government attended to argue that under 8 U.S.C. § 1446(a) and the 1998 Appropriations Act require USCIS to wait for the FBI background check to clear before taking action on deciding a naturalization case. The Court found that there was no such requirement in either of the above statutes. The Court concluded that “In light of the120-day statutory directive, the agency’s long delay (over four times the statutory period), and the absence of any evidence that the government tried to expedite Aronov’s application to comply with the statute, the government’s conduct toward Aronov can only be classified as unreasonable and not substantially justified.” Therefore, the Court upheld the District Court’s EAJA finding and remanded back so that the fee award may be recalculated to reflect the costs of the appeal.
The First Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction to review Ms. Lutaaya’s denial of asylum as the Court held there was no due process violation in the IJ and BIA finding that her asylum application was untimely and was unexcused by circumstances. The Court further held that the IJ and BIA properly denied Ms. Lutaaya’s withholding claim due to material discrepancies between documents she provide to the Court and her statements to the immigration court and those she previously made to the asylum officer. Included in the list of discrepancies outlined by the Court was that “Lutaaya had also reportedly told the asylum officer that five soldiers, not four, were involved in the attack and rape.” The Court also found that it lacked jurisdiction to review Ms. Lutaaya’s CAT claim as this 9sue was not raised before the BIA
First Circuit 
