The Third Circuit has denied a petition for review filed by a Dominican lawful permanent resident seeking, for the fourth time, to reopen a removal order that became final in 2011, holding that a change in law is never a basis for statutory reopening and that his separate motion for reconsideration was untimely by roughly thirteen years.
The Court held that the text of the statutory reopening provision requires "new facts" proven through evidentiary material, not a subsequent judicial decision interpreting an existing statute, and that permitting equitable tolling of that avenue based on later case law would collapse the deliberate distinction Congress drew between reopening and reconsideration. The Court also held that a recent Second Circuit decision interpreting the New York drug statute underlying the petitioner's removal order was not the kind of extraordinary circumstance that could excuse his years-late reconsideration motion, and that it lacked jurisdiction to review the BIA's discretionary denial of sua sponte reopening.
The full text of Aristy-Rosa v. Attorney General can be found here: https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/251490p1.pdf