An alien was not prejudiced by an immigration judge’s error when he failed to establish that the grant of relief was “plausible”

The defendant-appellant, Humberto Gonzalez-Flores, was placed in removal proceedings after a 2004 robbery conviction. During the proceedings, he appeared pro se and answered several questions posed by the immigration judge, after which the immigration judge found that Gonzalez-Flores was not entitled to the relief of voluntary departure based upon the nature of his criminal conviction. Gonzalez-Flores had re-entered the United States in 2008 and again in 2013, when he was arrested and charged with being an alien found in the United States after removal pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1326. However, Gonzalez-Flores moved to dismiss the information, claiming that his 2004 removal order was invalid pursuant to the requirements of § 1240.11(a)(2), as the immigration judge had failed to inform him that he “might” be eligible for voluntary departure. The court found that here, although the immigration judge had committed an error during the proceedings, Gonzalez-Flores’s positive equities were minimal and that he failed to meet his burden of establishing that other similarly situated aliens has received relief. As such, Gonzalez-Flores was not able to show that he suffered any prejudice.

_{Case Law Alerts, 3rd Quarter, July 2015}

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