Hernandez de Gutierrez v. Barr

Background

Sandra Hernandez de Gutierrez and Heberth Gutierrez are a married couple and citizens of El Salvador. They entered the United States without inspection in 1990. After El Salvador was designated for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), they applied for and received TPS in 2003. They continuously renewed that status. Hernandez de Gutierrez was also paroled into the United States in 2011 after a brief trip abroad.

Hernandez de Gutierrez’s mother, who is a United States citizen, filed an immigrant petition for her in 2004. The petition was approved, and an immigrant visa became available in 2016. The plaintiffs then applied to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to adjust their status from TPS to lawful permanent resident status under 8 U.S.C. § 1255.

USCIS denied Gutierrez’s application because it concluded that TPS did not qualify as an admission under § 1255(a), and because his 1990 entry meant he had not continuously maintained lawful status since entry. USCIS denied Hernandez de Gutierrez’s application on the second ground, although it found that her 2011 parole satisfied the threshold requirement in § 1255(a). The Administrative Appeals Office affirmed both decisions.

The plaintiffs sued under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which allows courts to review whether an agency acted unlawfully, arbitrarily, or capriciously. They also sought a declaratory judgment concerning the effect of TPS on their eligibility for adjustment of status. The defendants moved for summary judgment on the APA claim and moved to dismiss the declaratory-judgment claim. The plaintiffs filed a cross-motion for summary judgment.

Summary-Judgment Ruling

The parties agreed that there were no disputed material facts and that the issues were legal ones. The court applied the statutory-interpretation framework described in Chevron, under which a court first asks whether Congress directly answered the legal question. If the statute is clear, the court must follow that meaning rather than defer to the agency’s interpretation.

The court held that the TPS statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(f)(4), unambiguously treats a person granted TPS as being in and maintaining lawful nonimmigrant status for purposes of adjustment of status under § 1255. The court reasoned that a person with lawful nonimmigrant status has necessarily been admitted. It therefore held that the plaintiffs’ grants of TPS qualified as admissions under § 1255(a).

The court also rejected the agency’s interpretation of § 1255(c)(2), which bars certain people who failed to maintain lawful status continuously since entry. The court held that the plaintiffs’ TPS admissions operated as fresh lawful entries in 2003. Because it was undisputed that they had maintained continuous lawful status since those admissions, § 1255(c)(2) did not bar their adjustment applications.

The court concluded that the agency’s contrary decisions were arbitrary and capricious and not consistent with the clear statutory text. It granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment on Count I and denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment on Count I.

Declaratory-Judgment Claim

The defendants moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal for failure to state a legally sufficient claim. They argued that Count II, the declaratory-judgment claim, was redundant of the APA claim. The court agreed because the complaint sought a declaration related to the same issues resolved through the APA claim. It granted defendants’ motion to dismiss Count II.

Disposition

The order granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment on Count I. It granted in part and denied in part defendants’ combined motion to dismiss and for summary judgment: the court denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment on Count I and granted their motion to dismiss Count II. The matter was remanded to USCIS for adjudication consistent with the memorandum opinion and order.