Wissam Al-Saka v. Jefferson Sessions


RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) File Name: 18a0205p.06 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT WISSAM IBRAHIM AL-SAKA, ┐ Petitioner, │ │ > No. 17-3951 v. │ │ │ JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS, III, Attorney General, │ Respondent. │ ┘ On Petition for Review from the Board of Immigration Appeals; No. A 047 852 874. Decided and Filed: September 18, 2018 Before: BATCHELDER, SUTTON, and WHITE, Circuit Judges. _________________ COUNSEL ON BRIEF: Mohamed Elsharnoby, Dearborn, Michigan, for Petitioner. Rebecca Hoffberg- Phillips, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. SUTTON, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which BATCHELDER, J., joined, and WHITE, J., joined in part. WHITE, J. (pg. 11), delivered a separate opinion concurring in all but the discussion of the applicability of the Fifth Amendment due process guarantee. _________________ OPINION _________________ SUTTON, Circuit Judge. Wissam Ibrahim Al-Saka received permanent residency on the condition that he remain married to Hanadi Hashem, a U.S. citizen, for at least two years. He ran afoul of that condition when Michigan annulled the marriage months after he arrived here. The immigration authorities refused to waive the condition, found that Al-Saka and Hashem did not No. 17-3951 Al-Saka v. Sessions Page 2 marry in good faith, and determined that he should be removed. We must deny Al-Saka’s petition to stay. I. A Lebanese citizen, Al-Saka married Hashem, a U.S. citizen, in Beirut in August 1999. He entered the United States in March 2001 as a conditional permanent resident based on his marriage to Hashem. The marriage did not last. Just weeks after he entered the United States, the couple signed a religious divorce. In August 2001, the Lebanese government granted a legal divorce. Two months later, Michigan annulled the marriage at Hashem’s request after finding that “there had been no marital cohabitation.” A.R. 665. All of this extinguished the condition that justified Al-Saka’s permanent-residence status: the marriage to Hashem. Al-Saka remained in this country nonetheless. In January 2003, he married another woman in Lebanon. That February, he took steps to remove the permanent-residence condition. Because he had divorced Hashem, he could not file a joint petition with her, as the law requires. See 8 U.S.C. § 1186a(c)–(d). He instead asked the government to waive the requirement, claiming that deportation would cause hardship and claiming that he married Hashem in good faith. Id. § 1186a(c)(4)(A)–(B). In November 2016, an immigration judge held a hearing about his request. Al-Saka described his marriage to Hashem in Lebanon. He said that they lived together for three months in a house his father had bought for them. Then Hashem returned to the United States. She later traveled back to Lebanon and stayed another five or six months before returning to the United States in January 2001. According to Al-Saka, he followed her in March 2001 after recovering from a car accident. Al-Saka claimed Hashem met him at the airport but seemed “a little bit cold.” A.R. 135. He said he ...

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Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals