Immigration Success Stories USA

We would like to share a bit of good news from The Law Offices of Grinberg & Segal.

On March 24, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit certified its decision in Persad v. Barr, 17-661 [PDF version]. Our office represented the petitioner, Mr. Dasrath D. Persad, in his appeal of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) finding that his unitary sentence based on convictions for four separate offenses by a military court-martial in 1992 was categorically an aggravated felony theft offense under INA 101(a)(43)(G). I (Alexander J. Segal) presented oral arguments on behalf of Mr. Persad before a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit on October 16, 2018.

The Second Circuit ruled in favor of Mr. Persad in a very important decision. I will explain the legal issue briefly. Mr. Persad was sentenced to 30 months’ confinement for his conviction by military court-martial on four separate counts. In order for him to have been found to have committed an aggravated felony under INA 101(a)(43)(G), the Government was required to prove that he had been convicted of a theft offense for which a sentence of one year or more was imposed. Military court-martial issue what are called “unitary sentences,” that is, a single sentence for all the counts a defendant is convicted without imposing an individual sentence for each count. The question here was whether the Government could sustain its burden of establishing by clear and convincing evidence that the single theft offense count of four counts that Mr. Persad was convicted of accounted for at least 12 months of his 30-month unitary sentence.

The Second Circuit agreed with us, finding that the Government could not sustain its burden of showing that Mr. Persad was sentenced to one year or more of imprisonment for his conviction of the theft offense. Therefore, the Court concluded that Mr. Persad had not been convicted of an aggravated felony under INA 101(a)(43)(G).

This decision is not only an incredible result for Mr. Persad and our firm, but also a significant decision in the area of evaluating unitary sentences from military courts-martial and immigration consequences, in general The Second Circuit, in a matter of first impression, broadly agreed with the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Chavez-Alvarez v. Attorney General, 783 F.3d 478 (3d Cir. 2015) – which was not binding precedent on the Second Circuit – that the Government cannot merely assume that a unitary sentence from a military court-martial applies in full to each count. We discuss Chavez-Alvarez in a comprehensive article on site [see article]. The Second Circuit’s decision here, along with Chavez-Alvarez, promises to be very important to many non-citizens who were given unitary sentences in military court-martial proceedings encompassing multiple convictions.

The Second Circuit remanded Mr. Persad’s case for further proceedings consistent with its opinion. We will continue to represent Mr. Persad and hope to prevail on remand.

We will eventually write a more comprehensive article about this important decision in Persad v. Barr. In the meantime, we will continue to update our site with important immigration-related information about the ongoing coronavirus outbreak as it becomes available.

Stay safe.

Respondent is a person who had escape Russia due the threats to his life there on account of his political opinion and also because of the mandatory mobilization to war with Ukraine he wanted to have nothing to do with.

This is an interesting case. The IJ made several rather arbitrary findings, which the BIA agreed were not supported by the record. In assessing credibility, the IJ relied heavily on his own opinions and not the evidence in the record. Appeal sustained. Congratulations go to our entire team including Wendy R. Barlow who handled the appeal and Alexander J. Segal who handled the trial stage.

The case involved an application for asylum by a Baptist from Russia. While the Judge was unhappy with the credibility of the respondent and other issues having to do with his testimony; found that the respondent suffered no past persecution the Judge, nevertheless, concluded that the respondent managed to convince her that he was indeed a Baptist and that Baptists are routinely subjected to persecution in Russia so the Judge granted asylum based on well founded fear of future persecution.

A respondent in removal proceedings recently retained our firm to handle his application for asylum. The client, a gay man from India, feared persecution were he to return to India, where he had not been for a decade since he came to the United States as a nonimmigrant student. We can happily report that we were able to assist him in winning asylum in the United States.

As a threshold matter, we had to establish that the respondent’s asylum application was timely. He had initially entered the United States as an F-1 student in 2009, and his last entry was as an F-1 student 2011. In 2012, he obtained H-1B status, but his status lapsed when he was laid off from his position one year later. Because the client had hoped to eventually earn lawful permanent resident status based on his employment, he had not applied for asylum. He did however apply for asylum expeditiously – one week – after being laid off from his job. We were able to successfully argue that his failure to apply for asylum within one year of entry was excusable by extraordinary circumstances – specifically that he had lawful status for several years, and he then applied for asylum almost immediately after he lost the job that was the basis of his H-1B status.

Secondly, we had to establish that the client, who had not been subjected to past harm rising to the level of persecution, had a well-founded fear of future persecution. In addition to the fact that he had not been subjected to past persecution, the case was challenging because while the situation for sexual minorities in India is poor, it is not necessarily such that every adjudicator would presume that all sexual minorities in India presumptively have a well-founded fear of future persecution. The client’s personal statement described in detail the particular family and community circumstances that caused him to fear for his life were he to be removed to India. We buttressed his application by providing extensive supporting documentation about country conditions in India, showing that the harm he feared was very real.

After hearing and considering his case, the immigration judge granted the client’s asylum application, not only lifting the specter of serious harm or death that had loomed over him for many years, but also giving him the much-deserved opportunity to build a life for himself in the United States without fear that it could unravel at any moment. It was the privilege of The Law Offices of Grinberg & Segal to help him win asylum protection in the United States.