Acosta-Olivarria v. Lynch, 799 F.3d 1271 (9th Cir. Aug. 26, 2015) (noncitizen applying for adjustment of immigration status reasonably relied on Perez"Gonzalez v. Ashcroft, 379 F.3d 783 (9th Cir.2004), before the BIA Matter of Briones, 24 I. & N. Dec. 355 (BIA 2007), a decision directly disagreeing with Perez-Gonzales, despite obvious tension between Ninth Circuit and BIA prior to Briones, that case does not apply retroactively).

Acevedo v. Lynch, ___ F.3d ___, 2015 WL 4999292 (9th Cir. Aug. 24, 2015) (the definition of child in citizenship and naturalization provisions of INA does not include stepchildren).

United States v. Parral-Dominguez, ___ F.3d ___, 2015 WL 4479530 (4th Cir. Jul. 23, 2015) (immigration authorities are bound by interpretation of elements of state offense by states highest court); United States v. Aparicio"Soria, 740 F.3d 152, 154 (4th Cir. 2014) (en banc) (To the extent that the statutory definition of the prior offense has been interpreted by the state's highest court, that interpretation constrains our analysis of the elements of state law.).

9 FAM 40.21(b)a(2) includes the Lujan exception to controlled substances inadmissibility, but requires an advisory opinion before a Lujan exception will be granted. This FAM provision is found at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/86942.pdf

Note that the FAM authors misunderstood and misstated the holding of Nunez-Reyes v. Holder, 646 F.3d 684 (Jul. 14, 2011), when they stated that "state judicial expungements that predate this decision can still be effective for immigration purposes in the Ninth Circuit." This is only partly correct.

Matter of Ordaz, 26 I&N Dec. 637 (BIA 2015) (a notice to appear that was served on an alien but never resulted in the commencement of removal proceedings does not have "stop-time" effect for purposes of establishing eligibility for cancellation of removal pursuant to INA 240A(d)(1), 8 U.S.C. 1229b(d)(1)).

NOTE: This decision could potentially be used to argue for something like repapering (issuing a new NTA to allow noncitizen to have 10 years presence) as a form of prosecutorial discretion, except one would need to intercept the NTA before it is served on the court.

Federal conviction of misprision of a felony, under 18 U.S.C. 4, does not constitute an aggravated felony, or a crime of moral turpitude, at least within the Ninth Circuit. This offense is not considered a drug-trafficking aggravated felony, even if the principals felony was a drug-trafficking offense and the client were to receive a sentence of one year or more. See Matter of Espinoza-Gonzalez, 22 I & N Dec. 889 (BIA 1999), distinguishing, but not overruling Matter of Batista-Hernandez, 21 I. & N. Dec.

Lee v. Lynch, __ F.3d __ (10th Cir. Jul. 1, 2015) (section 242B(2) of the INA is not a jurisdictional statute; where noncitizen was detained in Tenth Circuit, but appeared telephonically in the Fifth Circuit, then appeared in the Fifth Circuit final hearing, the Fifth Circuit was the proper venue for appeal from BIA decision).

There is a decent argument that because some deportability and inadmissibility grounds specify jurisdictions, e.g., "state and federal and foreign" (controlled substance and aggravated felony grounds) or "state, federal, local and Indian" (domestic violence ground), that since "local" is included in at least one ground and not included in others, local ordinances would only give rise to deportability if the ground specifically says "local." See N. Tooby & J. Rollin, Criminal Defense of Immigrants 7.26 (2012).

The Ninth Circuit held that because a lesser included charge must be one that is necessarily included in the charged offense, the lesser-included possession offense must have been possession of the same substance charged in the dismissed count charging the greater offense.

Torres-Valdivias v. Lynch, ___ F.3d ___, 2015 WL 2146726 (9th Cir. May 8, 2015) (BIA was not required to apply categorical analysis to determine whether a conviction was for a violent or dangerous crime, for purposes of application of the enhanced hardship standard under Matter of Jean, 23 I. & N. Dec. 373 (Att'y Gen. 2002); immigration judge was allowed to examine documents outside the record of conviction in making the determination whether a conviction was for a violent or dangerous crime).