Immigration – Removal

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Ray Fuller v. Jefferson B. Sessions, III

Case No.: 17-3176

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and MANION and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Immigration – Removal

Petitioner Ray Fuller is in the final stages of removal proceedings in which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is seeking to have him sent back to his native Jamaica. This court has seen Fuller’s case before: in 2016, we considered Fuller’s petition for review from the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals to deny his applications for withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and withholding and deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). See Fuller v. Lynch, 833 F.3d 866 (7th Cir. 2016) (Fuller I). We concluded that we had no jurisdiction to review the Board’s characterization of Fuller’s 2004 conviction for attempted criminal sexual assault as a “particularly serious crime,” within the meaning of 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(B)(ii). That label has serious consequences: it barred Fuller from withholding of removal under both the INA and CAT. Turning to Fuller’s request for deferral of removal under CAT, the Board found (as had the Immigration Judge (IJ)) that Fuller had not credibly shown that he was bisexual, nor that the Jamaican government would regard him as such. Fuller urged us to revisit the evidence and to conclude otherwise, but we found that substantial evidence supported the Board’s finding and that we had no power to conduct a de novo review of the record.

Denied in part. Granted in part

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