F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
PUBLISH
June 21, 2006
UNITED STATES CO URT O F APPEALS Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
TENTH CIRCUIT
M AURICIO VARG AS,
Petitioner,
v. No. 05-9581
D EPA RTM EN T O F H O ME LA ND
SECURITY; M ARIO ORTIZ, Interim
District Director, in his official
capacity only; EXECUTIVE OFFICE
OF IM M IGRATION REVIEW ;
ALBERTO R. GONZALES, Attorney
General,
Respondents.
PETITIO N FO R R EV IEW O F A N O RD ER OF
THE BOA RD O F IM M IGR ATION APPEALS *
(B.I.A. NO . A 76-263-576)
Submitted on the briefs:
Patrick C. Hyde, Denver, Colorado, for Petitioner.
Jennifer L. Lightbody, Attorney, (Stephen J. Flynn, Senior Litigation Counsel,
with her on the brief), Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, U.S.
Department of Justice, W ashington, D.C., for Respondent.
*
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously to honor the parties’ request for a decision on the briefs without oral
argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore
ordered submitted without oral argument.
Before HA RTZ, EBEL, and T YM KOVICH, Circuit Judges.
HA RTZ, Circuit Judge.
Under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), “[a]ny alien who is convicted of an
aggravated felony at any time after admission is deportable.” The term
aggravated felony encompasses, among other things, “sexual abuse of a minor.”
8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(A). M auricio Vargas was ordered removed from the
country following a state conviction in Colorado for contributing to the
delinquency of a minor. He challenges the validity of his guilty plea in state
court, but we hold that we have no authority to address that claim in this
proceeding. He also contends that the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) erred
in concluding that his offense was an aggravated felony. W e have jurisdiction to
resolve this legal dispute under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D ). Because the state
charge against M r. Vargas was for contributing to the delinquency of a minor by
inducing the minor to engage in unlawful sexual contact, we hold that he was
found guilty of an aggravated felony.
I. B ACKGR OU N D
M r. Vargas seeks review of a final order of removal issued by the BIA on
September 6, 2005. He is a native and citizen of M exico. He became a lawful
permanent resident of this country on April 26, 1999. In October 2000 he was
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charged in Colorado state court with three counts of sexual assault on a child.
The State later added a fourth count that alleged that he “did unlawfully,
knowingly and feloniously induce, aid and encourage a child to violate a state
law , to-wit: UNLAW FUL SEXUAL CONTACT; C.R.S. 18-3-404(1)(a); in
violation of Section 18-6-701, C .R.S.; CONTRIBUTING TO THE
DELINQUENCY OF A M INOR.” R. at 76. Under a plea agreement he pleaded
guilty to count four and the first three counts were dismissed.
In M arch 2005 M r. Vargas received a notice to appear before an
immigration judge (IJ) to show why he should not be removed from the country
under the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) § 237(a)(2)(A)(iii), 8 U.S.C.
§ 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), because of this conviction. At a removal hearing on April 6,
2005, he admitted the factual allegations in the notice to appear but contended
that he was not removable because he had pleaded guilty only to contributing to
the delinquency of a minor, w hich, he contended, is not an aggravated felony.
The IJ disagreed, stating that “the crime of contributing to the delinquency of a
minor is an aggravated felony where the respondent was found guilty of
know ingly inducing or aiding a child to commit sexual contact.” R. at 45. On
April 12, 2005, M r. V argas was ordered removed to M exico.
M r. Vargas appealed the IJ’s ruling to the BIA, which affirmed, stating:
The Colorado offense of contributing to the delinquency of a minor
does not qualify categorically as “sexual abuse of a minor” because
there are many ways of committing that offense, only some of which
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involve sexual abuse. In such cases, we are authorized to consult a
limited number of judicially-noticeable documents, such as a
charging document or plea agreement, to determine whether an
alien’s conviction under a facially overbroad statute was nevertheless
a conviction for an aggravated felony. Cf. Shepard v. United States,
125 S. Ct. 1254, 1260 (2005). The charging document in this case
. . . makes it quite clear that the respondent’s contributing-to-the-
delinquency-of-a-minor offense conforms to the generic concept of
“sexual abuse of a minor” set forth at section 101(a)(43)(A).
Id. at 3. M r. Vargas seeks review of the BIA’s ruling. W e conclude that the BIA
properly determined that M r. Vargas committed an aggravated felony and
therefore affirm the removal order.
II. D ISC USSIO N
M r. Vargas challenges both his state-court conviction and its
characterization as an aggravated-felony conviction. He raises two due-process
claims with respect to his conviction. First, he asserts that his attorney during the
state criminal proceedings told him that pleading guilty to contributing to the
delinquency of a minor would not subject him to deportation. Because of this
misleading statement, he contends, he “has the right to withdraw his guilty plea.”
Aplt. Br. at 13. Second, he contends that it was unconstitutional for the state
court to accept his guilty plea because he continually maintained his innocence.
W hether these contentions have merit or not, we cannot address them. They are
beyond the scope of these proceedings. A “petitioner cannot collaterally attack
the legitimacy of his state criminal convictions in the deportation proceedings.
Thus, it is irrelevant for our purposes that an attorney might successfully have
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applied for the withdrawal of the guilty plea[ ] . . . .” Trench v. INS, 783 F.2d
181, 183 (10th Cir. 1986).
W e can, however, review his contention that the offense of contributing to
the delinquency of a minor is not an aggravated felony. For several years our
review of removal orders based on aggravated felonies was extremely limited.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, Pub. L.
No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009, enacted in 1996, added 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(C),
stating:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law . . . , no court shall
have jurisdiction to review any final order of removal against an
alien who is removable by reason of having comm itted a criminal
offense covered in section 1181(a)(2) or 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), (B), (C),
or (D) of this title, or any offense covered by section
1227(a)(2)(A)(ii) of this title for which both predictate offenses are,
without regard to their date of commission, otherwise covered by
section 1227(a)(2)(A)(i) of this title.
(emphasis added). In 2001 we held that this provision left us with jurisdiction
only to determine our jurisdiction; that is, once we determined that the petitioner
was (i) an alien (ii) deportable (iii) by reason of having comm itted an aggravated
felony, our jurisdiction was at an end and we would dismiss the petition for
review. See Tapia Garcia v. INS, 237 F.3d 1216, 1220 (10th Cir. 2001). But the
REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-13, 119 Stat. 231, partially restored our
jurisdiction. Now, new subparagraph (D) of § 1252 (a)(2) overrides
subparagraph (C) so that we can review “constitutional claims or questions of
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law” raised in a petition for review of a removal order, even in an aggravated-
felony case. 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D ); see Papageorgiou v. Gonzales, 413 F.3d
356, 358 (3rd Cir. 2005) (“This now permits all aliens, including criminal aliens,
to obtain review of constitutional claims and questions of law upon the filing of a
petition for review . . . .”). Because M r. Vargas’s challenge to the
characterization of his conviction raises such a question of law, we have
jurisdiction to review it. See Ali v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 443 F.3d 804, 809 (11th Cir.
2006) (reviewing under subparagraph (D) a claim that guilty plea in state court
did not constitute a “conviction” for purposes of the IN A).
The definition of aggravated felony in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(A) includes
“sexual abuse of a minor.” A lthough M r. Vargas challenges the BIA’s
classification of his conviction as sexual abuse of a minor, he does not challenge
the BIA’s definition of sexual abuse of a minor, which is borrowed from
18 U.S.C. § 3509. That statute defines sexual abuse to include “the employment,
use, persuasion, inducement, enticement, or coercion of a child to engage in, or
assist another person to engage in, sexually explicit conduct or the rape,
molestation, prostitution, or other form of sexual exploitation of children, or
incest w ith children.” 18 U.S.C. § 3509(a)(8); see M atter of Rodriguez-
Rodriguez, 22 I. & N. Dec. 991, 995-96 (BIA 1999) (adopting statutory definition
“as a guide”). Instead, he challenges whether the BIA could properly determine
that his offense involved the sexual abuse of a minor by looking to the allegations
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in the charging document rather than confining itself to the statutory definition of
contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
M r. Vargas contends that to determine whether a prior conviction qualifies
as an aggravated felony, we must follow the “categorical approach” set forth in
Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 600 (1990). See, e.g., Singh v. Ashcroft,
383 F.3d 144 (3d Cir. 2004) (applying Taylor to determine whether conviction for
“[u]nlawful sexual contact in the third degree” under Delaware law constituted
sexual abuse of a minor). In Taylor the issue w as w hether a state-court
conviction was for the predicate offense of “burglary” under the Armed Career
Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), which imposes increased sentences for
those with prior convictions of certain felonies. The Supreme Court interpreted
burglary in the ACCA to refer to “generic burglary,” meaning an “unlawful or
unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to
commit a crime.” 495 U.S. at 599. Taylor said that to determine whether prior
convictions were for generic burglary, courts could “look[] only to the statutory
definitions of the prior offenses, and not to the particular facts underlying those
convictions.” Id. at 600. In other words, only if the state statute required all the
elements of generic burglary could the defendant’s sentence be enhanced under
the ACCA. Taylor acknowledged, however, that
[t]his categorical approach . . . may permit the sentencing court to go
beyond the mere fact of conviction in a narrow range of cases where
a jury was actually required to find all the elements of generic
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burglary. For example, in a State whose burglary statutes include
entry of an automobile as well as a building, if the indictment or
information and jury instructions show that the defendant was
charged only with a burglary of a building, and that the jury
necessarily had to find an entry of a building to convict, then the
Government should be allowed to use the conviction for
enhancement.
Id. at 602. In Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13 (2005), the Court applied
this categorical approach to prior convictions resulting from guilty pleas rather
than jury verdicts. It again recognized that when the prior conviction was under a
nongeneric statute, courts could look to “the terms of the charging document, the
terms of a plea agreement or transcript of colloquy between judge and defendant
in which the factual basis for the plea was confirmed by the defendant, or to some
comparable judicial record of this information.” Id. at 26.
W e now apply the approach of Taylor/Shepard to this case. (Because we
deny relief to M r. Vargas under this approach, we need not decide whether the
constraints of Taylor and Shepard necessarily apply in resolving whether an
offense is an aggravated felony under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(A).) Colorado
Revised Statutes § 18-6-701 states, “Any person who induces, aids, or encourages
a child to violate any federal or state law , municipal or county ordinance, or court
order commits contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” This statute
encompasses a multitude of crimes, one for each predicate offense that the child
might be urged to commit. That offense could be anything from jaywalking to
murder. But the specific predicate offense must be charged and proved as an
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element of the offense of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. See People
v. Corpening, 837 P.2d 249, 252 (Colo. App. 1992) (jury instruction on
contributing to the delinquency of a minor was erroneous “because it failed to
state precisely which law was violated by the minor”). That is, to convict a
defendant of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, the jury “necessarily
ha[s] to find,” Taylor, 495 U.S. at 602, a specified predicate offense that the
defendant induced, aided, or encouraged the child to violate.
Hence, § 18-6-701 is like a statute that criminalizes both generic burglary
and other offenses. To determine whether a particular conviction under the
contributing-to-the-delinquency-of-a-minor statute was for sexual abuse of a
minor, Taylor and Shepard permit review of more than the definition of the
statutory offense. “W hen the underlying statute reaches a broad range of
conduct,” some of which would constitute an aggravated felony and some of
which would not, “courts resolve the ambiguity by consulting reliable judicial
records, such as the charging document, plea agreement, or plea colloquy.”
United States v. M artinez-Hernandez, 422 F.3d 1084, 1086 (10th Cir. 2005).
Accordingly, it was appropriate for the BIA to look at the charging document to
see what law the defendant induced, aided, or encouraged the minor to break. In
this case the charging document referenced Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-3-404(1)(a),
titled “Unlaw ful Sexual Contact,” w hich states that “[a]ny actor who knowingly
subjects a victim to any sexual contact commits unlawful sexual contact if . . .
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[t]he actor knows that the victim does not consent[.]” Thus, M r. Vargas was
charged with and convicted of encouraging a child to engage in nonconsensual
sexual contact. This is unquestionably sexual abuse of a minor. See 18 U.S.C.
§ 3509(a)(8). W e hold that M r. V argas was convicted of an aggravated felony.
III. C ON CLU SIO N
W e AFFIRM the order of the BIA .
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