Monday, May 11, 2026
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Ninth Circuit:
No Duty to Warn Potential Deportee of Duty to Update Address in Alien’s Native Language
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Friday that an alien who was ordered deported in her absence was not entitled to have proceedings reopened when she learned of the action because her lack of notice was caused by her failure to advise the court of a change of residence, declining to recognize a duty on the part of the government to provide an advisement in the person’s native language of the need to report a current address.
A panel denied Wendy Marie Urquia-Yanez’s petition for review of a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) upholding the deportation order.
“We hold what our case law has long assumed: that [the Department of Homeland Security] is not constitutionally required to translate the entirety of a Notice to Appear to aliens in their native language,” Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote, explaining:
“In arguing that the BIA committed reversible error, Urquia-Yanez asks this court to hold, for the first time, that English notice of an alien’s obligation to update her address is constitutionally insufficient where the alien is not a native English speaker. We decline to do so.
“This court has held that the Due Process Clause requires immigration agencies to provide ‘sufficient’ notice of pending actions to aliens….But whether notice is ‘sufficient,’ as we have explained, ‘is flexible and calls for such procedural protections as the particular situation demands.’…And our ‘case law has made clear that actual notice of a hearing is not always required to satisfy the requirements of due process.’…To the contrary, we have held that English-language notices may be ‘reasonably calculated to reach and to inform’ aliens of their obligations, sufficient to satisfy the demands of due process.”
The jurist added:
“Our immigration precedent already recognizes that English-language notices of an alien’s obligations generally are ‘reasonably calculated to reach and to inform’ aliens of their obligations, and thus sufficient to satisfy the demands of due process….We hold that such a standard likewise applies to an English-language-only written notice of an alien’s obligation to update her address with the [court] after moving.”
The case is Urquia-Yanez v. Blanche, 25-1136.
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