Santos Estevez v. United States Citizenship and Immigration Service

Background

On June 1, 2023, the parties filed a stipulated proposed order asking the court to dismiss the case without prejudice. The proposal included a statement that the court lacked jurisdiction to consider Elvia Santos Estevez’s challenge to USCIS’s denial under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(B)(i). Jurisdiction means the court’s legal authority to hear and decide a case.

Court’s action

The court declined to approve, or “so-order,” the stipulation as filed. It explained that approving the proposal might appear to hold, as a matter of law, that the court lacked jurisdiction, even though the court had not received full briefing on that issue. The parties could submit a revised proposal that omitted the jurisdictional statement, said that the parties agreed jurisdiction was lacking, or otherwise made clear that the dismissal would not decide the defendants’ jurisdictional arguments or the merits.

The court also postponed indefinitely the status conference scheduled for June 7, 2023, because the parties appeared to agree to discontinue the action. Elvia Santos Estevez did not need to call the court’s conference telephone number at that time. The order did not itself dismiss the case.

Disposition

Judge John P. Cronan declined to so-order the proposed dismissal as filed and adjourned the status conference indefinitely. The order did not reach the merits of the jurisdictional arguments and did not state that the case had been dismissed.