Ray Fuller v. Jefferson Sessions III


In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 17-3176 RAY FULLER, Petitioner, v. JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS, III, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ____________________ On Motion for Stay of Removal and for In forma pauperis status in connec- tion with a Petition for Review from the Board of Immigration Appeals. No. A077-811-635 ____________________ SUBMITTED OCTOBER 23, 2017 — DECIDED JANUARY 8, 2018 ____________________ Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and MANION and ROVNER, Cir- cuit Judges. WOOD, Chief Judge. Petitioner Ray Fuller is in the final stages of removal proceedings in which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is seeking to have him sent back to his native Jamaica. This court has seen Fuller’s case before: in 2016, we considered Fuller’s petition for review from the de- 2 No. 17-3176 cision of the Board of Immigration Appeals to deny his appli- cations for withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and withholding and deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). See Fuller v. Lynch, 833 F.3d 866 (7th Cir. 2016) (Fuller I). We con- cluded that we had no jurisdiction to review the Board’s char- acterization of Fuller’s 2004 conviction for attempted criminal sexual assault as a “particularly serious crime,” within the meaning of 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(B)(ii). That label has serious consequences: it barred Fuller from withholding of removal under both the INA and CAT. Turning to Fuller’s request for deferral of removal under CAT, the Board found (as had the Immigration Judge (IJ)) that Fuller had not credibly shown that he was bisexual, nor that the Jamaican government would regard him as such. Fuller urged us to revisit the evi- dence and to conclude otherwise, but we found that substan- tial evidence supported the Board’s finding and that we had no power to conduct a de novo review of the record. One mem- ber of the panel dissented. After our decision, Fuller returned to the Board with a mo- tion to reopen or reconsider its ruling; he referred to new af- fidavits in that motion. The Board denied the new motion on February 3, 2017, and Fuller did not file a petition for review of that order. On March 2, 2017, Fuller filed a Form EOIR-26 (a notice of appeal from an IJ decision), which the Board con- strued as yet another motion to reopen. Fuller said in that mo- tion that he was “ignorant, unprepared, and un-represented” at his original hearing and he asked for a chance to prove his credibility with respect to his sexual orientation. He included letters from three friends who live in Jamaica. Each writer says that he has known Fuller since childhood and believes that Fuller will be killed if he is forced to return to Jamaica. No. 17-3176 3 We refer to them as Writers A, B, and C. They have requested that their names not be publicized because they fear that they will be targeted as sympathizers of gay people and ...

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