The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) has determined that a “notice to appear that does not include the address of the Immigration Court where the Department of Homeland Security will file the charging document, or include a certificate of service indicating the Immigration Court in which the charging document is filed, does not deprive the Immigration Court of subject matter jurisdiction.” Instead, the BIA concluded that the regulations at issue are “claim-processing” or “internal docketing” rules, which do not implicate subject matter jurisdiction, and that a deficiency in the notice to appear can be remedied by providing the information required by the regulations in a later notice of hearing.

In so doing, the BIA equated the address of the court where the charging document will be filed with the “place” of the first hearing, and found that its prior decision in Bermudez Cota already noted that a subsequent hearing notice could cure the missing location of a first hearing. While the BIA noted that a timely objection can be raised to a claim-processing violation (and that the respondents in this matter did so), it found no prejudice to the respondents, and declined to terminate proceedings.

The full text of Matter of Rosales Vargas can be found here:

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1233181/download

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