CASE: Termination of Proceedings / I-751
APPLICANT: Ecuadorian
LOCATION: Cleveland, Ohio
Our client contacted our office in April 2012 regarding her removal proceedings representation and I-751 application.
She is from Ecuador and married a U.S. citizen in October 2004. Through her marriage, she obtained a 2-year conditional green card in September 2006. Her conditional residency terminated in September 2008.
To comply with immigration requirements, our client and her husband had to file an I-751 Joint Petition to Remove Conditions. However, they filed their I-751 application late. Later on, our client was placed in removal proceedings and had to appear for her Master Calendar hearing at the Cleveland Immigration Court on May 2, 2012. Our client retained our office on April 30, 2012 and Attorney Sung Hee (Glen) Yu represented our client at her initial Master Calendar Hearing. After the hearing, the Court scheduled an individual hearing to review her denied I-751 application.
In the meantime, our office contacted the Cleveland DHS office to terminate her removal proceedings. We prepared an affidavit of “good cause” for the late filing and showed it together with the bona fide evidence to the DHS. As a result, on September 19, 2013, the DHS agreed to terminate her removal proceedings. Accordingly, the Immigration Judge terminated our client’s removal proceedings.
Once her removal proceeding was terminated, our office prepared an I-751 application for our client with other supplemental exhibits including a detailed brief on why she filed her initial I-751 application late.
On September 30, 2013, our office filed an I-751 application to the USCIS with multiple affidavits from her friends and family members, joint bank statements, utility bills, insurance policies, and photos of our client and her husband to demonstrate the bona fideness of their marriage.
Once the application was filed, the fingerprint notice was issued two weeks later. There was no RFE issuance or interview request for our client’s I-751 application. As a result, on January 29, 2014, the USCIS approved our client’s I-751 application and our client received her 10-year green card which removed conditions on her residency.