Gomez-Sanchez v. Sessions

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the petition for review of the BIA's decision affirming the IJ's finding that petitioner was statutorily ineligible for withholding of removal because he was convicted of a "particularly serious crime," and holding that an applicant's "mental health as a factor in a criminal act falls within the province of the criminal courts and is not a factor to be considered in a particularly serious crime analysis." See Matter of G-G-S-, 26 I. & N. Dec. 339 (BIA 2014). The panel held that Matter of G-G-S- was not entitled to Chevron deference where its blanket rule against considering mental health was contrary to Congress's clearly expressed intent that the particularly serious crime determination, in cases where a conviction falls outside the only statutorily enumerated per se category of particularly serious crimes, required a case-by-case analysis. Furthermore, the BIA's interpretation was not reasonable in that the BIA's two rationales for its broad rule – 1) that the Agency could not reassess a criminal court's findings, and 2) that mental health was never relevant to the particularly serious crime determination – were unpersuasive and were inconsistent with the law of this Circuit and the BIA's own decisions. View "Gomez-Sanchez v. Sessions" on Justia Law