Tarlochan Singh v. PAMELA J. BONDI , Attorney General of the United States

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
Nos. 24-1602 & 24-2004
TARLOCHAN S INGH ,
Petitioner,
v.
PAMELA J. BONDI ,
Attorney General of the United States,*
Respondent.
____________________
Petitions for Review of an Order of
the Board of Immigration Appeals.
No. A200-775-574
____________________
A RGUED F EBRUARY 25, 2025 — DECIDED J ULY 18, 2025
____________________
Before S YKES , Chief Judge, and K IRSCH and JACKSON -
A KIWUMI , Circuit Judges.
JACKSON -A KIWUMI , Circuit Judge. Tarlochan Singh peti-
tions for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals decision
* Pamela J. Bondi replaced Merrick B. Garland as Attorney General
and is substituted as the respondent. See FED . R. A PP . P. 43(c)(2).

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2 Nos. 24-1602 & 24-2004
denying his motion to reopen immigration proceedings and
reissue an earlier decision upholding his removal order.
Singh had missed the thirty-day statutory deadline to petition
for review of that earlier decision, so he sought to reset that
thirty-day clock by requesting the order’s reissuance. But the
Board denied Singh’s motion to reopen because he failed to
fulfill the procedural requirements needed to bring such a
motion. Because the Board was right on that point, we deny
Singh’s petition.1
I
Tarlochan Singh is a forty-year-old Sikh man from India.
For more than half a decade, he and his family repeatedly suf-
fered violence because of his membership in and work for the
Shiromani Akali Dal Mann political party. Finally, after mem-
bers of the Indian National Congress party beat and hospital-
ized Singh in April 2010, Singh fled India. He arrived in the
United States without authorization two months later. Within
weeks, the Department of Homeland Security issued Singh a
Notice to Appear in a removal proceeding, charging him with
inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(7)(A)(i)(I). In
1 Singh also seeks review of the Board’s denial of a motion to recon-
sider that he filed while this first petition was pending. The Board denied
that motion because it was number barred.
We granted Singh’s request to consolidate the two petitions. Yet,
Singh abandoned his second petition when he failed to present an argu-
ment about that petition in his briefs and at oral argument. Accordingly,
we conclude that he waived any challenge to that decision. See Tuduj v.
Newbold, 958 F.3d 576, 579 (7th Cir. 2020) (“[A]rguments not raised in an
opening brief are waived.”).

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Nos. 24-1602 & 24-2004 3
response, Singh applied for asylum, withholding of removal,
and protection under the Convention Against Torture on the
grounds that he suffered politically and religiously motivated
violence and torture in India.
After reviewing the evidence, an immigration judge de-
nied Singh’s applications in August 2017. The judge found his
claims credible but reasoned that he did not suffer past perse-
cution (because he suffered only cuts and bruises in his beat-
ings) and did not establish a well-founded fear of future per-
secution (because he could avoid harm by relocating within
India). She also reasoned that his lack of past persecution pre-
cluded a finding of past torture, and she described his fear of
future torture as entirely speculative. Singh appealed the de-
nial to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which found no er-
ror and affirmed the judgment on September 12, 2018. That
decision kicked off a series of events that led to this appeal.
After the Board’s affirmance, Singh worked to file a peti-
tion for review with our court. But the attorney who was on
his case at the time, Amina Najib, did not have the resources
to file one. So, Singh retained a new attorney referred to him
by a friend. But that attorney, Gurpatwant Pannun, was not
admitted to appear before this court and did not inform Singh
of that fact. Still, Singh retained Pannun and paid him $2,500
up front without a contract. On October 5, 2018, Singh re-
ceived an email with a copy of the petition for review and in-
structions to print, sign, and return it to Pannun. Pannun then
mailed it to our court on October 9, 2018, but the mail carrier
did not deliver it until October 22, 2018. The government
moved to dismiss the petition for lack of jurisdiction on the
grounds of timeliness because the petition was filed after the
thirty-day deadline set forth in 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1), which

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4 Nos. 24-1602 & 24-2004
would have been October 12, 2018. On December 14, 2018, we
granted that motion and dismissed the petition.
Within days, Anas Ahmed, an attorney with Pannun’s law
firm, moved the Board to reopen and reissue its decision with
a current date. The four-page motion argued that the petition
for review would have been timely filed but for an unforesee-
able mailing delay. The Board denied the motion in April 2019
because Singh admitted that he received the Board’s 2018 de-
cision in a timely manner and did not allege error by the
Board.
Two months later, Singh filed a motion to reconsider—
which he later clarified was a motion to reopen—through a
new attorney. For the first time, Singh argued that Pannun
rendered ineffective assistance of counsel in preparing and fil-
ing his first petition for review. Two years passed before the
Board denied Singh’s motion on four grounds: (1) it was un-
timely; (2) it was number barred; (3) any ineffectiveness it al-
leged was related to proceedings outside the Board’s jurisdic-
tion; and (4) it failed to present additional legal arguments,
identify any changes in law, or point to an aspect of the case
that the Board had failed to consider previously.
Undeterred, Singh again filed a petition for review with
our court. In response, the government filed an unopposed
motion to remand the matter to the Board so that the Board
could consider the merits of Singh’s ineffective assistance of
counsel claim. We granted that motion and remanded the
case.
Back on remand before the Board, the government filed a
supplemental response in opposition to Singh’s motion for re-
consideration arguing that Singh had failed to meet the

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Nos. 24-1602 & 24-2004 5
procedural requirements for an ineffectiveness claim as set
forth in Matter of Lozada, 19 I. & N. Dec. 637 (BIA 1988). Singh
followed that with a detailed supplemental brief of his own.
But his efforts floundered. The Board again denied Singh’s
motion in a written order filed in March 2024.
In that order, the Board explained that it denied Singh’s
motion because, among other reasons, Singh did not satisfy
any of the three Lozada requirements. Singh then petitioned
this court for review of the Board’s decision. Because we agree
with the Board that Singh failed to comply with the relevant
procedural requirements, we deny his latest petition for re-
view.
II
We review the Board’s decision to deny Singh’s motions
to reconsider and reopen for abuse of discretion. Lopez-Garcia
v. Barr, 969 F.3d 749, 752 (7th Cir. 2020). “We will not overturn
the [Board] unless their decision is made without a rational
explanation, inexplicably departed from established policies,
or rested on an impermissible basis.” Id. (cleaned). Our review
of the petition for review is limited to the administrative rec-
ord under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(A). Further, “the administra-
tive findings of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable ad-
judicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary[.]”
Id. § 1252(b)(4)(B).
We have held that “failure to comply with the procedural
requirements for a valid motion to reopen ‘alone is normally
sufficient to overcome the contention that the denial of such a
motion was an abuse of discretion.’” Conti v. I.N.S., 780 F.2d
698, 701 (7th Cir. 1985) (citations omitted); see also Patel v. Gon-
zales, 496 F.3d 829, 831 (7th Cir. 2007) (“The BIA is free to deny

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6 Nos. 24-1602 & 24-2004
motions to reopen for failure to comply with Lozada as long as
it does not act arbitrarily.”). So, Singh’s petition turns on
whether he complied with the procedural requirements for an
ineffective assistance of counsel claim before the Board.
Under Lozada, the Board requires movants like Singh to
clear three procedural hurdles. They are:
(1) submit an affidavit establishing that the mo-
vant had an agreement with counsel for repre-
sentation and detailing its terms;
(2) present evidence that the movant has given
notice to counsel of the ineffectiveness claim
and an opportunity to respond to the allega-
tions, and include any response received from
counsel; and
(3) if counsel violated any ethical or legal obli-
gations, show that the movant has filed a com-
plaint with the governing disciplinary authori-
ties or explain why the movant has not done so.
See Jiang v. Holder, 639 F.3d 751, 755 (7th Cir. 2011) (citing
Lozada, 19 I. & N. Dec. at 639). The Board found that Singh
failed to provide a detailed account of the actions counsel
agreed to take on his behalf because the scope of Singh’s
agreement with Pannun remained unclear, even after consid-
ering Singh’s affidavit and supporting documentation. The
Board also found that Singh did not provide proof that he had
filed the disciplinary complaint that he attached to his motion,
and he did not allege that he had informed Pannun of the al-
legations.

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Nos. 24-1602 & 24-2004 7
Singh conceded at oral argument that he needed to satisfy
all three Lozada requirements. We review Singh’s compliance
with each of the requirements below.
As for the first Lozada requirement—establishing a de-
tailed attorney-client agreement and the subsequent deficien-
cies—we turn for guidance to Patel, where we dealt with a
similar set of facts. In Patel, the Board found that Patel did not
meet the first or second Lozada requirements because his affi-
davit did not allow the Board to ascertain the scope of work
his attorneys had agreed to perform and there was no evi-
dence that he actually notified the attorneys of his allegations.
496 F.3d at 830. This court explained that “the crux of the
[Board]’s finding is that Patel did not explain what actions his
prior counsel were hired to undertake—and the record sup-
ports that finding.” Id. at 833. We reached that conclusion be-
cause Patel’s “affidavits d[id] not reveal whether [Attorney A]
or [Attorney B] (or both) was responsible for his case, nor do
they clarify whether Patel retained [Attorney C] to file a mo-
tion to reopen.” Id. That lack of clarity alone was fatal in Patel,
and it is fatal here. Not only does Singh acknowledge that
there was no contract (oral or written), he also fails to allege
what exactly he retained Pannun to do. That shortcoming is
important because the assertions in his affidavit are entirely
consistent with an agreement that Pannun’s firm ghostwrite
and file a pro se petition for review—which is what it did.
We turn to the second Lozada requirement. Singh argues
that merely filing a complaint with the disciplinary board sat-
isfies this requirement. He cites no authority in support of this
position, nor can we identify any. But Patel is again informa-
tive, and again to Singh’s detriment. In that case, we noted
that “Patel skipped over the first notification step and went

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8 Nos. 24-1602 & 24-2004
straight to the second, filing [disciplinary] complaints against
former counsel just days before he filed his second motion to
reopen” and then “never supplemented this motion with [his
attorneys’] responses during the intervening three months be-
fore the [Board] ruled.” 496 F.3d at 832. We faulted Patel for
proceeding in this fashion, and we concluded that Patel failed
to comply with the notification requirement. We see no rea-
son to reach the opposite conclusion here.
Lastly, we do not need to decide whether Singh met the
third Lozada requirement because he failed to meet the first
two, and that is enough to deny the petition. Patel, 496 F.3d at
833 (“We could deny the petition based solely on Patel’s fail-
ure to meet one Lozada requirement[.]”). Because Singh failed
to comply with the procedural requirements, we conclude
that the Board did not abuse its discretion in denying his mo-
tion to reissue the Board’s earlier decision. Conti, 780 F.2d at
701.
III
The petition for review is therefore DENIED.

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