NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 18a0012n.06 No. 17-3150 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT FILED Jan 05, 2018 SOFONIAS VERDUGO-MORALES, ) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk ) Petitioner, ) ) ON PETITION FOR REVIEW v. ) FROM THE UNITED STATES ) BOARD OF IMMIGRATION JEFFREY B. SESSIONS III, Attorney General, ) APPEALS ) Respondent. ) OPINION ) ) BEFORE: GILMAN, SUTTON, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges. JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge. Petitioner Sofonias Verdugo-Morales entered the United States without inspection in early 2001. That same year, he pleaded guilty to a California misdemeanor domestic violence charge arising from an incident involving his then-girlfriend, now-wife. Verdugo-Morales received a sentence of probation and suspended costs. He and his wife subsequently moved to Michigan, where they welcomed a child. In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security commenced removal proceedings against Verdugo-Morales. Both an Immigration Judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals determined that the 2001 misdemeanor plea precludes Verdugo-Morales from seeking cancellation of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act, rendering his removal virtually inevitable. Although this result strikes us as particularly harsh, we acknowledge that the law dictates it. We therefore AFFIRM. No. 17-3150 Verdugo-Morales v. Sessions I. BACKGROUND Verdugo-Morales left Mexico and entered the United States without inspection in January 2001. In October of that year, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of California Penal Code § 273.5 for an incident involving his then-girlfriend, with whom he lived at the time and to whom he is now married. Verdugo-Morales received a sentence of probation with suspended costs of $300. He and his partner subsequently moved from California to Michigan, where their son was born in July 2007. The couple also shares two older children, who were born before 2001 and who remained in Mexico with Petitioner’s mother-in-law. Verdugo-Morales, who was the sole provider for his family, has been steadily employed since 2001, and he worked for the same restaurant in Michigan from 2005 until he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2013. In November 2013, ICE arrested Verdugo-Morales and the Department of Homeland Security placed him in removal proceedings. He received a Notice to Appear deeming him removable under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Verdugo-Morales admitted all factual allegations and conceded the charge of removability. He then applied for cancellation of removal, arguing that the hardship of removal weighed in favor of cancellation. In July 2015, an Immigration Judge (IJ) denied Verdugo-Morales’s request for cancellation of removal. The IJ determined that Verdugo-Morales’s misdemeanor plea under section 273.5(a) constituted a crime involving moral turpitude. The IJ also determined that Verdugo-Morales’s 2001 plea was a “crime of domestic violence” under the INA, see 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(E)(i), which meant that Verdugo-Morales could not establish the continuous physical presence necessary for removal cancellation. The IJ ordered that Verdugo-Morales’s application for cancellation of removal be pretermitted. Verdugo-Morales filed a timely appeal -2- No. 17-3150 Verdugo-Morales v. Sessions to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which issued a separate ...
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