IMMIGRATION/DEPORTATION APPEALWORKS®
Appellate practice dedicated exclusively to filing deportation appeals, motions to reopen, reconsider, remand and/or reissue before Immigration Judges or the Board of Immigration Appeals, and filing petitions for judicial review of deportation orders in all of the Federal Circuits of the United States. Although this website is designed mainly to assist immigration attorneys in their deportation defense practice, this website is also useful for noncitizens in deportation proceedings that are acting without attorneys as a source of valid information.
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Petitions for Review to the United States Court of Appeals to any of the Federal Circuits from Final Orders of the Board of Immigration Appeals, Including Petitions for Review from Final Orders of Reinstatement by ICE.
Petitions for Review are the only level of review (as a matter of right) of an administrative decision either from an order of deportation or removal issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals, or an order of reinstatement issued by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). In other words, once the Board of Immigration Appeals decides the appeal of the noncitizen (from an order of deportation or removal from an immigration judge) the noncitizen has the right, by statute, to seek judicial review of the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Likewise, the same rule applies to all orders of reinstatement issued by an ICE officer in that the noncitizen will have the same right to seek judicial review of the decision of reinstatement from ICE. A petition for review is filed with the United States Court of Appeal within the particular federal circuit where the administrative lower proceedings were held. To be clear, noncitizens have three levels of review of their cases. The first level of review is before the immigration judge, the second level of review is before the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the third level is before the corresponding federal circuit court of appeals, in the jurisdiction where the lower proceedings were held.
- For example, if the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals arises from an appeal filed by a noncitizen from an order of deportation or removal by an Immigration Judge in New York City, the affected noncitizen can elect to either give up at this time and leave the United States, or continue to fight his or her removal by filing a Petition for Judicial Review before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
With regards to orders of reinstatement issued by an ICE officer, the noncitizen only has two (2) levels of review. The first level is before the ICE officer that issues and tenders the noncitizen with a "Notice of Intent to Reinstate an Order of Deportaton or Removal". The second level of review takes place with the federal circuit court of appeals as described above. Both levels of review (note that we use the term "review" only as it is commonly use in the English language and not in its legal definition of an appellate level) are significantly limited to a series of three questions, except that lately, the federal circuits are more amenable to examine constitutional questions and legal questions involving that limited review process.
- For example, the federal courts may be more willing to expand their examination of a final order of reinstatment to whether at the time the noncitizen was issued a "Notice of Intent to Reinstate a Previous Order of Removal or Deportation" he was denied a reasonable opportunity to challenge the decision of the ICE officer where the denial was prejudicial.
LEGAL FEES INVOLVING PETITIONS FOR REVIEW
The legal fees involved in representing a noncitizen in this type of cases will be quoted to you after we have been able to determine the specific issue or issues in each case. Why is this necessary is because the questions presented in a petition for review do not always involve the same issue or issues. For example, a petition for review may involve the question of whether a certain conviction constitutes an aggravated felony (a term of art to describe the most seriously adverse findings that a judge could make to deprive a noncitizen of otherwise available remedies from such a conviction). The legal fees associated with such a petition for review will depend on the specific federal circuit that the petition must be filed according to the location of the removal proceedings. If removal proceedings were concluded by a judge in Dallas, Texas for example, then the corresponding federal circuit is the Fifth Circuit of the United States. The Fifth Circuit is as "conservative" as they can be, and will require as a result considerable amount of effort to distinguish your case from those cases forming precedence in that circuit. Conversely, if your removal proceedings were conducted in New York, the corresponding federal circuit in that event would fall under the jurisdiction of the Second Circuit of the United States. The Second Circuit has long been characterized as less conservative and assuming the same question that was presented in the Fifth Circuit in the example above were presented to the Second Circuit, it would not be surprising that the same amount of effort may yield a different result in the end.
We have filed and prosecuted hundreds of petitions for review and in every federal circuit of the United States. Our fees in all cases will always be reasonable and affordable as evidenced by the legal fees charged for the three levels of appeals shown in the "Our Fees" page. However, to obtain more information on our fees in filing and prosecuting a petition for review, please contact us by email, fax, or telephone to discuss the issues that may be presented and a determination of our fees will be made at that point. The hourly fees are generally the same as Level B appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals, but the total number of hours necessary to prosecute a petition for review can vary from case to case and from circuit to circuit and whether we will be required to file a motion for stay of removal at the same time. And again, because all we do day in and day out is filing appellate briefs before the BIA and petitions for review in all of the federal circuits involving deportation cases, our legal fees are substantially less than any other immigration lawyer would likely charge anywhere in the United States.
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DETAILED INFORMATION PERTAINING TO EACH CIRCUIT OF THE UNITED STATES THAT HANDLE PETITIONS FOR REVIEW OF FINAL ORDERS OF REMOVAL UNDER 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)
There are a total of eleven circuits in the United States that have jurisdiction (authority) to consider and decide petitions for review filed by noncitizens from final orders of the BIA. Each of these circuits in turn expands its jurisdictional territory over several states across the United States (remember there are 51 states and only 11 circuits, discounting the federal district of the District of Columbia). The largest of these circuits is the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, covering nine (9) different states in the west and two (2) other territories, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Each of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals has its own local rules, filing procedures and variations from the other circuits that must be carefully understood before attempting to file a petition for review, and particularly when filing a request for a stay of the order of removal. It is a mistake to believe that the rules applicable by one of these circuits is the same as the others. For example, some of the federal circuits allow a petition for review to be filed electronically in an instant, while the remainder require the filer to forward the petition on paper. Hence, knowing in advance the particular circuit's filing procedures can be an advantage as well as a fatal mistake if the filer accepts to take the case the same day the petition is required to be filed. Knowing the distinctions on how each fderal circuit varies is therefore an indispensible factor for the novice.
The First Circuit covers the New England states of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island.
The Third Circuit covers Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Fourth Circuit covers Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. The Eighth Circuit covers Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. The Ninth Circuit covers the following states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. In addition, it covers the territorial possessions of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands. The Tenth Circuit covers Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming, and,
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