United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 24-1511
IGOR LEANDRO RAMOS GONCALVES,
Petitioner,
v.
PAMELA J. BONDI,*
UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL,
Respondent.
PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF
THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS
Before
Rikelman, Howard, and Aframe,
Circuit Judges.
Sierra J. Perez-Sparks, with whom David Zimmer was on brief,
for petitioner.
Christopher Ian Pryby, Trial Attorney, Office of Immigration
Litigation, Civil Division, with whom Brian M. Boynton, Principal
Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Immigration
Litigation, Civil Division, and Anthony C. Payne, Assistant
Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, were on brief, for
respondent.
* Pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure
43(c)(2), Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi is automatically
substituted for former Attorney General Merrick B. Garland as
respondent.
May 20, 2025
AFRAME, Circuit Judge. Igor Quinn-Goncalves, an
undocumented native and citizen of Brazil, brings this petition
for review of an April 17, 2024 decision of the Board of
Immigration Appeals ("BIA") denying his appeal of an immigration
judge's order that he be removed from the United States.1 The
petition was not timely filed in this Court and therefore is
dismissed.
Quinn-Goncalves, who has been detained at all relevant
times, acknowledges that his petition was untimely because it
arrived at the clerk's office on May 20, 2024 -- three days after
the last day on which it could have been timely filed.2 See
8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1) (requiring that petitions for review "be
filed not later than 30 days after the date of the final order of
removal"); Fed. R. App. P. 15(a)(1) ("Review of an agency order is
commenced by filing, within the time prescribed by law, a petition
for review with the clerk of a court of appeals authorized to
review the agency order."); id. 25(a)(2)(A)(i) ("[F]iling [of a
1 Although the petitioner submitted his petition under the
name Igor Leandro Ramos Goncalves, he changed his name to Igor
Quinn-Goncalves after marrying Kerry Quinn-Goncalves. We use the
petitioner's married name.
2 Kerry Quinn-Goncalves sent the petition through the
United Parcel Service ("UPS") on May 17, 2024 -- the last day on
which it could be timely filed. She contends that she did so after
phoning the clerk's office on that date and being incorrectly
advised that placing the petition in the mail by the deadline was
sufficient to make the petition timely.
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petition for review] may be accomplished by mail addressed to the
clerk, but filing is not timely unless the clerk receives the
[petition] within the time fixed for filing."). He also recognizes
that this Court may not extend the time for filing a petition for
review. See Fed. R. App. P. 26(b)(2) (stating that, while an
appeals court generally may extend time deadlines "[f]or good
cause," it "may not extend the time to file," inter alia, a
petition for review of a decision of an administrative board); see
also id. 2(a) ("[A] court of appeals may -- to expedite its
decision or for other good cause -- suspend any provision of these
rules in a particular case and order proceedings as it directs,
except as otherwise provided in Rule 26(b)."). He nevertheless
contends that we may address the merits of his petition through a
post hoc extension of time for the clerk to receive the petition,
and that good cause exists for us to do so.
Quinn-Goncalves's principal argument builds from the
premise that, under section 1252(b)(1), Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(i), and
Rule 26(b)(2), a petition for review placed in the mail within
thirty days of the final order of removal, as his petition was, is
filed upon mailing. Proceeding from there, Quinn-Goncalves argues
that, while Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(i) also establishes a separate and
distinct timely "receipt" requirement -- a requirement that he
acknowledges he did not satisfy -- Rule 26(b)(2)'s prohibition on
"extend[ing] the time to file" a petition for review applies only
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to the filing of the petition, and not to its receipt by the clerk.
Thus, the argument runs, Rule 26(b)'s prohibition on an extension
of time "to file" a petition for review does not preclude a court
from, for good cause, extending the time for receipt of the filing.
The government disputes Quinn-Goncalves's premise that,
in the context of nonelectronic filing under Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(i),
mailing the petition constitutes filing the petition. According
to the government, the act of filing is not complete in this
context until the clerk receives the petition. Here, because the
clerk received the petition three days after the statutory filing
deadline, the government argues that it was not timely filed. And
Rule 26(b)(2), the government says, bars this Court from addressing
the merits of a petition for review that was not timely filed.
We assume arguendo two elements of Quinn-Goncalves's
case that are contested by the government. First, we assume that
Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(i) governs this case even though
Quinn-Goncalves's wife sent the petition by UPS rather than by
depositing it in the U.S. mail. See supra, note 2. Second, we
assume that Quinn-Goncalves could establish good cause under Rules
2(a) and 26(b) for the clerk's untimely receipt of his petition.
Even so, we conclude that a petition for review mailed but not
timely received within the time fixed for filing falls within Rule
26(b)(2)'s prohibition on the Court granting time extensions.
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Quinn-Goncalves's argument in support of reading the
word "filed" in section 1252(b)(1) to refer only to mailing a
petition for review, and not its receipt, begins from an analogy
he draws to the Supreme Court's reasoning in Houston v. Lack, 487
U.S. 266 (1988). There, a state prisoner proceeding pro se timely
"deposited" with prison authorities a notice of appeal from the
denial of his federal habeas petition.
Id. at 268. But the
notice, which prison authorities then mailed, did not arrive at
the appropriate district court clerk's office until after the
expiration of the applicable statutory deadline. See
id. at 268-
69. Emphasizing the obstacles to timely filing faced by
unrepresented prisoners, the Court held that the prisoner's notice
was "filed" within the meaning of the applicable procedural
provisions when the prisoner deposited the notice with prison
authorities for mailing. See
id. at 269-76.3
3 The procedural provisions applicable in Houston included
28 U.S.C. § 2107 and Rules 3(a) and 4(a)(1). See
487 U.S. at 272.
Like
8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1), the then-extant version of
section 2107 set forth a thirty-day time limit but neither
"define[d] when a notice of appeal has been 'filed' [n]or
designate[d] the person with whom it must be filed . . . ."
Id.
And the then-extant versions of Rules 3(a) and 4(a)(1) "[were] not
dispositive" of when "filing" occurs as a textual matter.
Id. at
273.
Subsequently, in 1993, Rule 25 was amended to
memorialize Houston's holding and extend it "to all papers filed
in the courts of appeals by persons confined in institutions."
Fed. R. App. P. 25 advisory committee's note to 1993 amendment.
In relevant part, Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(iii) states:
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There are some similarities between the statute
interpreted in Houston, 28 U.S.C. § 2107, and section 1252(b)(1).
As just observed, neither statute provided a definition of the
steps required for filing a paper. See supra, note 3. Moreover,
Houston adopted a "mailbox rule" even though, as in this case,
neither of the applicable Rules of Appellate Procedure clearly
required it to do so. See Houston,
487 U.S. at 274; Fed. R. App.
P. 3(a), 4(a)(1).4 But on balance, Houston undermines, rather than
supports, Quinn-Goncalves's argument.
First, Houston emphasized that its ruling was informed
by the "unique" constraints faced by pro se prisoners. Houston,
Inmate Filing. If an institution has a system designed
for legal mail, an inmate confined there must use that
system to receive the benefit of this [Rule]. A paper
not filed electronically by an inmate is timely if it is
deposited in the institution's internal mail system on
or before the last day for filing . . . .
4 Contrast the relationship between the Supreme Court
certiorari statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2101 -- which specifies the
deadlines for, inter alia, filing a petition for a writ of
certiorari without defining when filing occurs -- and Supreme Court
Rule 29.2, which quite clearly adopts a mailbox rule:
A document is timely filed if it is . . . sent to the
Clerk through the United States Postal Service by
first-class mail (including express or priority mail),
postage prepaid, and bears a postmark, other than a
commercial postage meter label, showing that the
document was mailed on or before the last day for filing
. . . .
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487 U.S. at 272.5 Quinn-Goncalves did not face all of these
constraints. Critically, he was not in the position of having 'no
choice but to entrust the forwarding of his [papers] to prison
authorities . . . .'"
Id. His wife sent his petition to the Court
on his behalf, and he also concedes that he had access to but did
not use an electronic filing system of the type now authorized by
Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(iii), which did not exist when Houston was
decided. See supra, note 3.
Second, Houston stated that it was not disturbing the
general rule in civil appeals, confirmed by "a large body of lower
court authority," that receipt by the court is ordinarily a
necessary filing element. 487 U.S. at 274 (collecting illustrative
cases). In other words, Houston carefully limited its adoption of
the mailbox rule to the specific situation presented in that case
5 Houston identified the following constraints as relevant
to its conclusion: (1) "pro se prisoners cannot personally travel
to the courthouse to see that the [paper] is stamped 'filed' or to
establish the date on which the court received the notice"; (2) pro
se prisoners are disadvantaged compared with other litigants in
that only they are forced to "entrust their [papers] to the
vagaries of the mail and the clerk's process for stamping incoming
papers"; (3) pro se prisoners cannot "place the [paper] directly
into the hands of the United States Postal Service (or a private
express carrier)" or "call[] the court" to confirm that it has
been "received and stamped, knowing that if the mail goes awry
they can personally deliver [the paper] at the last moment or that
their monitoring will provide them with evidence to demonstrate
either excusable neglect or that the [paper] was not stamped on
the date the court received it"; and (4) pro se prisoners have "no
choice but to entrust the forwarding of [their papers] to prison
authorities whom [they] cannot control or supervise and who may
have every incentive to delay." 487 U.S. at 271.
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which, as we have just said, is quite different from the situation
here.
Third, Houston observed that the administrative concerns
frequently cited in support of the general rule that filing is
fully accomplished only upon receipt -- namely, that adoption of
a mailbox rule "would increase disputes and uncertainty over when
a filing occurred" and "would put all the evidence about the date
of filing in the hands of one party" -- do not apply to a pro se
prisoner. Id. at 275. A pro se prisoner "does not anonymously
drop his [paper] in a public mailbox," but rather "hands it over
to prison authorities who have well-developed procedures for
recording the date and time at which they receive papers for
mailing and who can readily dispute a prisoner's assertions that
he delivered the paper on a different date."
Id. But these
administrative concerns do militate against the use of a mailbox
rule to assess the timeliness of a filing by one who simply drops
a petition for review in a publicly accessible mailbox. See Fed.
R. App. P. 25(a)(2)(A)(i).6
6 We recognize that Kerry Quinn-Goncalves's use of UPS to
send the petition to the clerk's office made it unlikely that any
controversy would arise about the date on which she sent the
petition. See supra, note 2. But Quinn-Goncalves asks us to treat
his case as if he had "accomplished" his filing "by mail" within
the meaning of Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(i). We do so for the sake of
argument and thus analyze the case as if it in fact involved a
mailbox mailing which would raise the concerns described above.
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For these reasons, we reject Quinn-Goncalves's argument
that, under the reasoning of Houston, we should read section
1252(b)(1) to treat a petition for review as filed when mailed.
In this situation, the general rule should apply.
In addition to relying on Houston, Quinn-Goncalves makes
an independent argument that Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(i) provides that
timely filing occurs upon mailing the petition within the statutory
deadline. He contends that the Rule's statement that "filing may
be accomplished by mail" must be read to mean that the filing is
complete upon mailing, and that the subsequent provision of the
Rule stating that the "filing is not timely unless the clerk
receives the paper within the time fixed for filing" simply adds
an additional, waivable, timely-receipt requirement. He also
suggests that a contrary reading would render the Rule's timely-
receipt language superfluous and that a comparison of the text of
Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(i) with that of Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(ii) and (iii)
reinforces his contention that filing is completed upon mailing
under all three subsections.7 Again, we disagree.
7 Quinn-Goncalves says that if, as a general matter,
filing is not complete until a paper is received by the clerk,
then there would be no need to include language specifying a timely
receipt requirement. But the very fact that we are relying on a
"general rule" concerning the completion of filing in the context
of mailed papers makes clear that there also are exceptions. To
see that this is so, one need look no further than Rule
25(a)(2)(A)(ii), which specifies that, notwithstanding the
provisions of Rule 25(a)(2)(a)(i) requiring timely receipt by the
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The better reading of the Rule, we believe, starts with
recognizing that section (a)(2)'s heading -- "Filing: Method and
Timeliness" -- suggests that both method and timeliness are
elements of an effective "filing." See Fed. R. App. P. 25(a)(2).
The remainder of the section then provides details about both
elements in various filing scenarios. Under this reading, the
statement that "filing may be accomplished by mail addressed to
the clerk" in Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(i) is not a statement about how
filing is to be completed; it is, rather, an affirmation that a
mailing to the clerk is a permissible method of nonelectronic
filing. And the immediately subsequent statement that a "filing
[by mail] is not timely unless the clerk receives the papers within
the time fixed for filing" is a necessary clarification about how
the timeliness of a mailed filing will be judged. Such a
clarification is necessary because, unlike an electronic or hand
-delivered submission, the clerk will not receive a mailed filing
simultaneously with its being submitted. Rules 25(a)(2)(A)(ii)
and (iii) then carve out, respectively, mailbox-rule exceptions to
the generally applicable timeliness requirement for briefs,
clerk for most papers, "[a] brief or appendix not filed
electronically is timely filed" if "on or before the last day for
filing, it is . . . mailed to the clerk . . . or dispatched to a
third-party commercial carrier for delivery to the clerk within 3
days." Thus, rather than being surplusage, the timely-receipt
language in Rule 25(a)(2)(i) serves to clarify that the mailbox
rule adopted in Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(ii) for briefs and appendices
does not apply to other papers.
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appendices, see supra, note 7, and inmate filings, see supra, note
3, that are not filed electronically. And Rule 25(a)(4) reinforces
that filing generally occurs upon receipt by the clerk. See id.
("The clerk must not refuse to accept for filing any paper
presented for that purpose solely because it is not presented in
proper form as required by these rules or any local rule or
practice." (emphasis added)).8
The understanding that the elements of an effective
filing include both a permissible method and a standard for judging
timeliness also leads to a more even-handed and administrable
operation of Rule 26(b)'s prohibition on granting good-cause
extensions of the time to file petitions for review.
Quinn-Goncalves's proposed use of a mailbox rule to differentiate
petitioners who are eligible to seek a good-cause time extension
from those facing a time-bar runs counter to the unqualified
language of Rule 26(b), which uniformly bars untimely petitions.
We see no reason to introduce a disparity into the operation of a
rule whose text does not contemplate it. Moreover,
Quinn-Goncalves's proposal (1) would likely increase uncertainty
and thus disputes over when a "filing" has occurred, and (2) would
put all of the evidence about the date of filing in the hands of
8 As the government points out, the words "for filing"
would be superfluous if the filing was complete upon mailing, for
the mailed paper already would have been filed.
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one party. Both factors counsel in favor of treating timely
receipt as an element of filing under Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(i). See
Houston, 487 U.S. at 275 (elaborating why the timeliness of the
filing of a mailed paper is usually based on when it is received
by the clerk and not when it is mailed).
Although Quinn-Goncalves mailed his petition before the
expiration of the statutory deadline for filing his petition for
review, he failed to ensure that the clerk received it by that
deadline. Quinn-Goncalves therefore failed to timely file his
petition, see, e.g., Chao Lin v. U.S. Att'y Gen., 677 F.3d 1043,
1044-46 (11th Cir. 2012) (petition untimely when sent by
third-party courier before deadline but not received until after
deadline); Navarro-Miranda v. Ashcroft,
330 F.3d 672, 676 (5th
Cir. 2003) (similar, involving mailed petition); Sankarapillai v.
Ashcroft,
330 F.3d 1004, 1005-06 (7th Cir. 2003) (similar,
involving petition mailed on the deadline); is barred by Rule 26(b)
from obtaining a post hoc extension of time for filing;9 and has
presented no other developed argument for avoiding the prohibition
set forth in Rule 26(b).10 Accordingly, we dismiss the petition.
9 Cf. Diaz-Valdez v. Garland, 122 F.4th 436 (1st Cir. 2024)
(remanding to the agency to apply the correct legal standard in
addressing a request for equitable tolling, based on the BIA's own
precedent, construing the BIA's regulation setting out a thirty-day appeal deadline).
10 Quinn-Goncalves does present an alternative request that
we treat his filing as a timely inmate filing under
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Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(iii), see supra, note 3, and excuse for good cause
his failure to deposit it in his institution's internal mail
system. But Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(iii), by its terms, precludes us
from doing so. See id. ("If an institution has a system designed
for legal mail, an inmate confined there must use that system to
receive the benefit of this Rule . . . .") (emphasis added).
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