Lopez-Ticas: A Missing Hearing Date Does Not Undo What You Admitted

The notice that started your deportation case never gave the date and time of your first hearing. Your lawyer later admitted what the notice alleged and agreed you could be removed. Then the Supreme Court said notices like yours do not comply with the statute. Can you take back the admission and end the case?

No, the Board of Immigration Appeals held. A missing hearing date does not make anything you admitted false. An immigration judge in this case twice ended the proceedings over that defect, and the Board twice brought them back. The objection had to come before pleadings closed, the stage when a person answers the notice’s allegations. Hers came almost two years after.

The case is Matter of Wendi del Carmen Lopez-Ticas, 29 I&N Dec. 90, Interim Decision 4100 (BIA May 29, 2025). The Board relied on Sixth Circuit precedent for the test on withdrawing an admission, so a California reader has to check it against Ninth Circuit law, which states the test differently. The decision also contains a warning that matters as much as its holding: Objecting to a defective notice can cost you time you may need.

Terminated twice, reinstated twice

The Department of Homeland Security personally served this woman from El Salvador with a notice to appear on February 13, 2018. It left out the date and time of her first hearing. She does not claim she never received it.

On November 5, 2019, through her lawyer, she pleaded orally. She admitted the factual allegations and conceded she could be removed as charged. Nobody objected to the notice.

The Supreme Court decided Niz-Chavez in April 2021. On October 29, 2021, she moved to terminate because of the notice. The immigration judge agreed on November 12, and DHS appealed. In October 2022, the Board reversed: Under Matter of Fernandes, she had forfeited the objection by not raising it before pleadings closed.

On remand, she tried another route. She moved to withdraw her pleadings and to terminate again. On March 24, 2023, the immigration judge granted both. He reasoned that once the old pleadings were gone, the case was back at the start, so her objection was now on time. He added that Fernandes should not apply retroactively, and that termination was the only workable remedy. DHS appealed again.

Four questions about a defective notice

A defective notice to appear is not one legal problem. It is several, and the answer depends on what you are trying to do with the defect.

• Stopping the cancellation clock. Pereira v. Sessions, 585 U.S. 198 (2018), held that a notice without the time and place does not stop the time a person accumulates toward cancellation of removal. Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 593 U.S. 155 (2021), added that the government cannot fix that with a later hearing notice. It takes one complete document.
• Undoing an order after a missed hearing. Campos-Chaves v. Garland, 602 U.S. 447 (2024), went the other way. A person who received a proper notice of the hearing he missed cannot rescind the removal order because the first notice was incomplete. The Board has applied that rule in Laparra-Deleon.
• Attacking the court’s power. A defective notice does not strip the immigration court of jurisdiction. The Board so held, and so did the en banc Ninth Circuit in United States v. Bastide-Hernandez, 39 F.4th 1187 (9th Cir. 2022).
• Objecting in the removal case itself. Matter of Fernandes, 28 I&N Dec. 605 (BIA 2022), held the time-and-place requirement is a claim-processing rule: a rule that must be enforced if someone objects on time, and that is lost if no one does. An objection is generally timely if raised before pleadings close.

Lopez-Ticas belongs to the last group. It answers what happens when someone misses that window and tries to reopen it by taking back her plea.

Admitting the allegations is not conceding service

A lawyer’s admissions bind the client unless there are “egregious circumstances.” The Board took the test from Matter of Velasquez, 19 I&N Dec. 377 (BIA 1986), through the Sixth Circuit’s Hanna v. Holder, 740 F.3d 379 (6th Cir. 2014). First, as a threshold, the person must show “that the factual admissions or concessions of [removability] were untrue or incorrect,” with evidence in the record. Then she must show one of two things: The concession resulted from unreasonable professional judgment, or holding her to it would produce an unjust result, including when an intervening change in law has undercut it.

The immigration judge thought she met the threshold because her lawyer’s “concession of proper service” was incorrect. The notice was defective, so conceding service was wrong.

The Board’s first answer was simple. Her lawyer never expressly conceded proper service. The lawyer admitted the allegations and conceded removability, and that is all the record showed.

Its second answer does more work. Even if the lawyer had conceded service, the judge had confused two different acts. A pleading, under 8 C.F.R. § 1240.10(c), is a statement whether the person “admits or denies the factual allegations and his or her removability under the charges.” Conceding service is “simply an acknowledgment that the notice was properly served.” It “is not a pleading.” And service was proper here. The notice was handed to her personally, and that is what the service statute asks. Leaving out the date “does not render service of the document deficient.”

Why the missing date made nothing untrue

This is the heart of the decision, and it is a point about what an admission is.

A notice to appear typically says things like: You are not a citizen. You came from this country. You entered on or about this date. Those statements are true or false regardless of whether the paper also gives a hearing date. Her admissions addressed those statements, so the omission could not make them wrong. The Board held that the lack of time and place information “does not render untrue or incorrect a respondent’s admission to the factual allegations or invalidate the charges of removability in the notice to appear and therefore is not a proper basis for granting a respondent’s motion to withdraw pleadings.”

The Board drew the line from both sides. An immigration judge “cannot simply ignore or overlook” the defect if it is timely raised. The judge also “cannot simply treat the notice to appear as never having been served or filed.” The Board quoted Fernandes: “A noncompliant notice to appear is not equivalent to a lack of a notice to appear altogether.” She had received notice of the allegations and charges and a fair chance to answer them. That left no defect in the pleadings to repair.

Withdrawing the plea could not rescue a late objection

Everything else fell once the withdrawal fell. The judge’s main reason for treating the objection as timely was that he had erased the pleadings. With the pleadings restored, the objection came almost two years after she pleaded.

A footnote gives the reason behind the rule. Letting someone withdraw her pleadings “would effectively permit the respondent to hold an objection to a later point in proceedings,” which would hamper DHS’s ability to finish the case. That is the reasoning of Fernandes, where the timing rule exists so DHS can fix a notice before substantive matters are decided.

The judge’s two change-in-law rationales failed as well. The Board had already held in Matter of Larios-Gutierrez de Pablo and Pablo-Larios, 28 I&N Dec. 868 (BIA 2024), that the Fernandes timing rule is not a change in law and applies retroactively. And Matter of Nchifor, 28 I&N Dec. 585 (BIA 2022), held that Niz-Chavez is not a change in law that warrants terminating proceedings.

We would add a point the Board did not make. Pereira was decided on June 21, 2018, more than 16 months before she pleaded. Anyone arguing that the law changed after a plea entered in late 2019 has to account for that. The Eighth Circuit reached the same result on Fernandes in Amador-Morales v. Garland, 94 F.4th 701, 703–04 (8th Cir. 2024), holding that it “was not an intervening precedent.”

Saying nothing can be the smart move

The most practical sentences in Lopez-Ticas are in its first footnote. The Board noted that she raised no claim of ineffective assistance and that nothing suggested any. Then it explained why not objecting may be the right call, quoting one of its own earlier decisions.

Here is the tradeoff. Cancellation of removal for a person without a green card generally requires ten years of continuous physical presence. A defective notice does not stop that clock, though a qualifying criminal offense can stop it on its own under 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(d)(1)(B). As Matter of Aguilar Hernandez, 28 I&N Dec. 774, 779 (BIA 2024), put it, a person who does not object “will continue to accrue continuous physical presence.” If she does object and DHS cures the defect, “then the ‘stop-time’ rule prevents the respondent from accruing additional physical presence.”

A timely objection may not end the case in any event. Fernandes held that termination is not required and that the judge should give DHS a chance to fix the problem. It left the available remedies open and suggested DHS might dismiss without prejudice and start over with a new notice. Aguilar Hernandez then rejected a fix by Form I-261, and Matter of R-T-P-, 28 I&N Dec. 828 (BIA 2024), allows a defective notice to be amended. As we read these decisions, someone at nine years of presence could win the objection and lose the case: A complete notice would stop the count short of ten. For someone with no route to cancellation, that cost may not matter. The choice belongs to the client, with advice, before the plea.

The same footnote has a sharper edge. Because the decision is “often a tactical choice,” a lawyer’s silence will not easily be treated as a mistake. The Board quoted Matter of Gawaran for the rule that a person is bound by counsel’s “reasonable tactical actions.”

What a California case must also check

The Ninth Circuit uses the same Velasquez framework but states it differently. Santiago-Rodriguez v. Holder, 657 F.3d 820, 831–32 (9th Cir. 2011), sets out three separate circumstances that relieve a person of a lawyer’s admission: Binding her to it would “produce[ ] an unjust result”; she later offers evidence proving that “the factual admissions and concession of [removability] were untrue or incorrect”; or the admissions “were the result of unreasonable professional judgment,” meaning ineffective assistance of counsel. Lopez-Ticas, following Hanna, treats untruth as a threshold for every claim. The difference matters. Under Santiago-Rodriguez, an intervening change in law is its own example of an unjust result, separate from untruth. On the facts there, the route depended on a prima facie showing, meaning evidence of a reasonable likelihood, that the person was not removable on the disputed brother-smuggling ground under the corrected law. Someone in California can argue that route without first showing untruth, though the Board’s rulings that Fernandes is not a change in law, and that Niz-Chavez is not one warranting termination, will be an obstacle, and a missing hearing date does not by itself show that a person is not removable as charged.

Put the two decisions together. If the fact you admitted is actually false, Santiago-Rodriguez is the Ninth Circuit’s answer: Evidence proving the admission untrue relieves you of it, and the court said that binding a person to an erroneous factual admission and ordering removal on that basis would deprive him of an opportunity to be heard. If the fact is true and your only complaint is about the notice, Lopez-Ticas says that gives you nothing to withdraw, and the change-in-law route above is one argument left, along with ineffective assistance if a lawyer failed you.

Two more Ninth Circuit points matter. Suate-Orellana v. Garland, 101 F.4th 624 (9th Cir. 2024), sent a notice claim back to the Board to consider Niz-Chavez, Bastide-Hernandez and Fernandes together. And Umana-Escobar v. Garland, 69 F.4th 544 (9th Cir. 2023), held that a person who argued only jurisdiction before the Board had not exhausted a claim-processing theory. Name the claim-processing objection expressly at every level.

One question remains less settled than it looks: when pleadings close. Her case did not test it, because nearly two years separated the plea from the objection. The Eighth Circuit in Amador-Morales held that pleadings had closed once substantive matters on relief were under way. A dissent objected that Fernandes never defined the point. In a case where the objection comes soon after a plea, that argument is open.

What goes back to the immigration judge

The Board sustained DHS’s appeal, vacated the March 24, 2023 decision, reinstated the proceedings and remanded “for further proceedings consistent with this decision.” Her admissions and concession stand. Her case returns to the immigration court without a notice objection, and the opinion does not say what relief she may seek there.

Before you plead, and after

• Read the notice to appear for the date, time and place before the first pleading. If they are missing, decide about the objection then. A written pleading has to include it, or under Fernandes it is deemed waived. A timely objection does not require a showing of prejudice.
• Count your years of presence first. Work out how close you are to ten years and whether an objection that gets the notice fixed could cost you cancellation.
• Do not plan on a later withdrawal. Under Lopez-Ticas, a missing date is not a reason to take back an admission, and the Eighth Circuit in Amador-Morales refused withdrawal on a similar theory.
• If an admission is actually wrong, say so and prove it. File a timely motion to amend the pleading with the immigration judge, bring the document that shows the true fact, and ask to testify. Santiago-Rodriguez relieves a person who offers evidence proving an admission untrue, and R-T-P- recognizes a judge’s authority to amend pleadings where appropriate and necessary. The Ninth Circuit has since said more about the chance to be heard. See Later developments.
• If an earlier lawyer failed you, raise that as ineffective assistance. The Board noted she did not. Expect the government to call silence on the notice a tactical choice, and be ready to show there was no reason for it.
• Keep the notice arguments separate. The stop-time argument under Niz-Chavez is different from a Fernandes objection and from a request to undo an in absentia order, one entered after a missed hearing. Our guide to reopening after a missed hearing covers the third.

Later developments. After this analysis’s March 28, 2026 date, the Ninth Circuit held in Urias-Gaxiola v. Blanche, No. 22-1474, 2026 WL 2590513 (9th Cir. Sept. 2, 2026), that a person who asserts that a lawyer’s admission was untrue is entitled to offer evidence proving it. Demetrio Urias-Gaxiola’s lawyer had admitted he entered without inspection. He moved to amend, saying he had last entered with a visa. The immigration judge denied the motion without explanation and cut off his testimony: “The charge has been sustained. We’re not going into it.” The court held that the Board abused its discretion in affirming that denial, and that an affidavit attached to a later motion to remand did not cure being barred from testifying. If the judge finds the admission untrue, the amendment should be granted. The court’s companion memorandum denied his cancellation-hardship challenge and related due-process claim. Winning the chance to correct his admission would not end his case. He would still have to show that he was lawfully in the United States after an earlier admission, or that he was entitled to be admitted and was not inadmissible as charged. Proof of a past lawful entry might not be enough if he overstayed his visa. DHS could add a visa-overstay charge, which it would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence. The published opinion reached only the untrue-admission ground. It did not take up the unjust-result or ineffective-assistance circumstances and left open whether a judge could allow amendment on other grounds.