Togbah v. Mayorkas

Background

Ursuline Togbah challenged the denial of her application to adjust her immigration status under the Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act (LRIF). She entered the United States on March 9, 2018, on a temporary B-1 visa. She married Joseph Togbah, a Liberian national, on June 17, 2018. Joseph Togbah entered the United States as a refugee in 1998 and became a lawful permanent resident in 2008.

LRIF provides a path to lawful permanent residence for certain Liberian nationals who were continuously present in the United States beginning November 20, 2014. It also allows the spouse, child, or unmarried son or daughter of an eligible principal applicant to apply. Togbah filed an application on February 24, 2020, identifying herself as a principal applicant rather than a derivative applicant. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) requested evidence that her husband was an LRIF applicant. She declined to provide additional supporting evidence.

USCIS denied the application on December 15, 2020, because Togbah had not shown that she was the spouse of a qualifying Liberian national principal applicant. The agency stated that her husband could not be considered a principal applicant under LRIF because he had not applied to adjust his status under that law.

Togbah then sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, asking the court to declare that the government had misinterpreted LRIF and to order USCIS to reopen her application and adjust her status. The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment based on the administrative record.

Legal issue and analysis

The court reviewed the agency’s interpretation of LRIF under the Administrative Procedure Act. It first examined the statute’s text and concluded that the text unambiguously supported the government’s interpretation.

The court rejected Togbah’s argument that LRIF created two independent paths: one for Liberian nationals who met the continuous-presence requirement and another for their spouses and children. The court reasoned that a spouse applying under the second provision must be the spouse of an alien described in the first provision. In the court’s view, that required the principal applicant not only to have been continuously present in the United States but also to have filed an LRIF application.

Because Joseph Togbah had not filed an LRIF application, the court held that he was not an alien described in the principal-applicant provision. As a result, Ursuline Togbah was ineligible for adjustment of status under LRIF’s spouse provision. The court added that, even if the statute were ambiguous, the USCIS policy manual reasonably required a derivative spouse application to be filed together with or after the principal applicant’s LRIF-based application.

Disposition

Judge David S. Doty denied Ursuline Togbah’s motion for summary judgment, granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, and dismissed the case with prejudice. The court noted that its ruling did not prevent Togbah from seeking lawful permanent resident status through other means.