CASE: Adjustment of Status at Removal Proceeding
CLIENT: Sierra Leonean
LOCATION: Cleveland, OH (USCIS / EOIR)
Our client came from Sierra Leone in January 2011 as a visitor. She married her U.S. Citizen husband in September 2013. Her authorized stay period expired at the time of her marriage. Due to her overstay, our client was placed in removal proceedings in December 2013. She retained our office in January 2014 for legal assistance in her removal proceedings representation and I-130 filing.
On November 5, 2015, the USCIS Cleveland office denied our client’s I-130 petition not because of his current marriage, because of her first marriage to a US Citizen. Before and at the interview itself, extensive evidence of bona fide marriage covering 2 years of marriage were submitted. The couple was able to answer a majority of the questions in the two and half hour interview, and the grounds and discrepancies relied upon by the USCIS in denying the I-130 compared to the majority and relevance of the correctly answered questioned together with the extensive evidence was relatively minor. A majority of the questions were also about her first marriage.
In response to this denial decision, we timely filed a Notice of Appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals from a decision of a USCIS officer on December 5. Eventually, on July 8, 2016, the BIA found that a remand is warranted for our client’s case. As a result, on September 26, 2017, our client and her U.S. Citizen husband appeared at the USCIS Cleveland Field Office for another I-130 follow-up interview after this case was remanded to the USCIS.
Even after the second interview, the I-130 remained pending without any issuance of an RFE or Notice of Intent to Deny. In the meantime, we filed Motions for Continuances for her Master Calendar hearings based on the pending I-130 petition. The Cleveland Immigration Court kept granting our Motions. The USCIS Cleveland Field Office finally approved our client’s I-130 petition on January 23, 2018.
Once the I-130 petition is approved, our office prepared and filed the I-485 Adjustment of Status Application and other supporting documents to the Cleveland Immigration Court.
On April 8, 2021, Attorney Sung Hee (Glen) Yu represented our client at her Individual Hearing for adjustment of status. After the hearing, the Immigration Judge granted our client’s adjustment of status application. Our client’s removal case was terminated simultaneously. Now, our client is a green card holder.