Patricia Audrey PETERS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Janet A. NAPOLITANO, Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 10-55889
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Argued Aug. 6, 2013. Submitted and Filed March 20, 2014.
554 Fed. Appx. 589
Before: TALLMAN, CLIFTON, and CALLAHAN, Circuit Judges.
David L.S. Richmond, Esquire, Richmond and Richmond, Van Nuys, CA, for Plaintiff-Appellant. Patricia Audrey Peters, pro se. Patricia Bruckner, Trial, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Defendant-Appellee.
Patricia Peters appeals the district court‘s judgment affirming, under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) denial of Peters’ application for adjustment of status. Three days after the district court entered judgment, USCIS issued a Notice to Appear commencing removal proceedings. Because the commencement of removal proceedings forecloses any plausible relief on Peters’ APA claim, we dismiss this appeal as moot.
Under Cabaccang v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 627 F.3d 1313, 1315-17 (9th Cir. 2010), a district court loses subject-matter jurisdiction of an APA claim challenging USCIS‘s denial of an application for adjustment of status once removal proceedings have begun and the same relief may be pursued before the immigration court. Peters concedes that if we were to find error in the district court‘s resolution of the claim, the district court could not enter a judgment for Peters on remand. And even assuming we could remand directly to USCIS, such a remand would be “futile at this point” because now “the immigration judge has exclusive jurisdiction over [Peters‘] adjustment of status application[.]” Ibarra v. Swacina, 628 F.3d 1269, 1270 (11th Cir. 2010).
As for her challenge to the decision of USCIS, the commencement of removal proceedings has left Peters without a “legally cognizable interest in the outcome,” Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 496-97, 89 S.Ct. 1944, 23 L.Ed.2d 491 (1969), and reduced her appeal of the agency‘s resolution to an abstract exercise. “It has been long settled that a federal court has no authority to give opinions upon moot questions or abstract propositions, or to declare principles or rules of law which cannot affect the matter in issue in the case before it.” Church of Scientology v. United States, 506 U.S. 9, 12, 113 S.Ct. 447, 121 L.Ed.2d 313 (1992) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). When
The appeal is DISMISSED as moot.