Trigueros Quizar: Five Minutes Late, and No Receipt for the Flat Tire

The way Angel Danilo Trigueros Quizar tells it, the tire went flat on Prater Way. He was driving from his home in Sparks, Nevada, to a 1:00 p.m. hearing in Reno on his application for asylum and related protection. He drove on the deflating tire to a nearby shop, begged for an emergency repair and got one in about 15 minutes. He reached the immigration court at about 1:05, he says. Security staff told him the hearing was over and he had been ordered removed.

Undoing an order like that takes a motion to reopen. And that motion raises a hard question for anyone in his position: What if the only account of what happened on the road is your own?

In Trigueros Quizar v. Blanche, No. 24-4847 (9th Cir. Sept. 4, 2026), a published decision by a divided panel, the Ninth Circuit held that the immigration agency had asked him for the wrong things. It had faulted him for filing no separate sworn statement and no same-day repair receipt. Under the circuit’s long-standing rule, a person filing without a lawyer need not supply a formal affidavit, and the agency cannot insist on documents backing up an account it has not found “inherently unbelievable.” The court did not rescind the removal order. It sent the motion back for the agency to decide again.

About six weeks later, the Board of Immigration Appeals answered in a precedent decision: Its judges need not accept that rule. Anyone who misses a hearing in California now has to plan for both.

Five minutes produced a removal order

The case began in 2022, when the Department of Homeland Security charged Trigueros Quizar, a citizen of Guatemala, as removable. He conceded the charge and, without a lawyer, applied for asylum, withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture. His individual hearing was set for September 1, 2023. He was to appear in person in Reno. The judge would appear remotely from California.

When he was not there at 1:00, the judge deemed his application abandoned and ordered him removed in his absence. Lawyers call that an in absentia order.

He moved to reopen on time, still without a lawyer, and the flat-tire story comes from that motion. It said he left home “sometime after 12:00pm,” got a flat on Prater Way and drove to Hooten Tire Company, where staff made “a hasty repair.” It said he passed through security at about 1:05 and learned it was too late. It said he asked the staff to call the court, and that he believes a security guard and a representative of a DHS supervision program named “Carolina” did.

He attached one document: a receipt from the same shop for four new tires, dated September 21, three weeks after the hearing. He explained that he went back to buy them “[i]n gratitude.”

The judge did not call the story unbelievable

The immigration judge accepted two points in his favor. A flat tire on the way to a hearing “may constitute an exceptional circumstance.” And his papers did not render his claims “inherently unbelievable.”

The judge denied the motion anyway. Relying on the Board’s 2021 decision in Matter of S-L-H- & L-B-L-, the judge wrote that a person claiming exceptional circumstances must “provide adequate documentary evidence” and that it “should corroborate the cause” of the late arrival. The September 21 receipt, the judge wrote, “makes no mention of a previous flat tire.” The court had no record of the phone calls. And he had missed an earlier hearing and disregarded an order about filing his application.

The Board wrote its own decision and agreed. He had filed no “separate affidavit submitted under penalty of perjury” describing what happened at the court. He “did not submit a receipt for the tire repair” from the day of the hearing. The judge had found no records of the calls. Looking at “the totality of the circumstances,” the Board said, the judge got it right.

A paper motion starts with the person’s word

A person can undo an in absentia order by filing a motion to reopen within 180 days and showing that “exceptional circumstances” caused the absence. The statute’s examples are serious ones: battery or extreme cruelty to the person or the person’s child or parent, the person’s own serious illness, and the serious illness or death of a spouse, child or parent. The circumstances must be beyond the person’s control, and “less compelling” ones do not count.

In 2026, the en banc Ninth Circuit explained how to measure that in Montejo-Gonzalez v. Bondi. Courts look at the “totality of the circumstances,” including whether people were diligent, whether they met external or unforeseen trouble and whether they “lacked a motive to evade the hearing.”

Then comes the evidence. The statute says a motion to reopen “shall be supported by affidavits or other evidentiary material.” For decades, Ninth Circuit cases have added a rule that follows from how these motions work. They are decided on paper, with no hearing and no witness for a judge to watch. So the agency generally must accept a person’s sworn facts as true unless they are “inherently unbelievable.” Corroboration of a credible declaration, the court has said, “is not required.”

Two earlier cases show the rule at work. In Arredondo v. Lynch, a woman said she missed her hearing because her car broke down, and the Board said she had not corroborated it. In Hernandez-Galand v. Garland, a woman pointed partly to memory problems from a childhood head injury, and the Board said she had offered nothing to back that up. In both, the Ninth Circuit held that missing corroboration was not a proper reason to set the account aside.

The agency demanded two things the circuit does not require

The Ninth Circuit reviews the denial of a motion to reopen for abuse of discretion. Judge Owens, writing for himself and Judge Forrest, found two errors.

The first was the affidavit. The Board appeared to fault Trigueros Quizar for not filing a separate sworn statement. But people who file without a lawyer “are not required to submit a formal affidavit.” And to the extent the Board wanted an explanation, his motion had already given one.

The second was the receipt. The agency held the missing documents against him even though his account was not “inherently unbelievable.” That demand rested only on S-L-H-, the Board’s own decision. The court’s answer took one sentence: “A BIA decision cannot displace our precedent.”

The dissent said the receipt hurt him

Judge VanDyke opened his dissent with Indiana Jones creeping through a booby-trapped temple. That, he wrote, is how immigration judges must feel about Ninth Circuit law. He called the requirement to accept a person’s account the “deem-true rule,” said it has no basis in the statute and conflicts with Garland v. Ming Dai, a 2021 Supreme Court decision, and urged that it be corrected.

His narrower point is the one that bears on this case. Circuit law bars the agency from requiring corroboration, he wrote, but it “never says the agency must ignore evidence the petitioner voluntarily provides that undermines the credibility of his self-serving statement.” Here the agency had a receipt that said nothing about September 1, no record of the calls and a history of missed obligations. He called the receipt “worse than no corroborating evidence.” He also observed that Trigueros Quizar, standing in the tire shop three weeks later and spending nearly $400, could have asked for a simple note about the repair.

The majority said it was “merely following and not expanding” existing law, and its reason turns on what the agency actually wrote. The judge found the account was not inherently unbelievable, and the Board did not disagree. The agency “did not find that the receipt for new tires somehow cast doubt on his credibility.” It faulted him for failing to produce better paper. And a court of appeals does not find facts in the first instance. Judge VanDyke read the same agency decision differently, as a weighing of all the evidence. So the two opinions divide over what the agency did as well as over the rule.

A remand for reconsideration

The panel granted the petition and remanded “for the agency to reconsider Trigueros Quizar’s motion to reopen under the proper evidentiary requirements.” The remedy was reconsideration of his motion. It left his removal order to the agency and his asylum application undecided.

The agency still had real questions to answer. The immigration judge had said only that a flat tire “may” qualify. The statute requires circumstances that caused the absence and were beyond his control, and the en banc test looks at diligence and motive. Judge VanDyke wrote that the majority “isn’t explicit about what should happen on remand.” The majority does not say how the agency should treat the missing call records or his earlier missed hearing. Judge VanDyke reads its reasoning to mean that the agency must ignore them.

One issue did end. After he appealed, a lawyer he hired filed a brief with the Board one day late, explaining that counsel had been confused about the time zone for electronic filing. The Board refused to accept it, and the panel upheld that refusal. The flat tire earned another look. The time-zone mistake did not.

Six weeks later, the Board rejected the rule

On October 19, 2026, the Board decided Matter of J-E-D-C-, 30 I&N Dec. 162 (BIA 2026), a case arising within the Ninth Circuit. It held that immigration judges and the Board “are not required to accept as true facts set forth by the respondent, even when those statements are not inherently unbelievable.” It recognized that it generally must follow the circuit where a case arises, and it even quoted Trigueros Quizar’s line about displacing circuit precedent. Its reason for departing was a claimed conflict with two Supreme Court decisions, INS v. Abudu and Ming Dai. It also agreed with Judge VanDyke that the rule has no basis in the statute.

That leaves two institutions saying different things. The Ninth Circuit majority says the agency cannot demand corroboration of an account it has not found unbelievable. The Board says its judges may assess a statement’s reliability under ordinary credibility standards. A person in California should expect the Board’s approach before the immigration judge and the Board, and can press the circuit’s rule in a petition for review. Our J-E-D-C- analysis explains the Board’s reasoning, and our guide to the conflict explains how to preserve the argument.

If you arrived late, build the motion for both rules

• The deadline. A motion based on exceptional circumstances must be filed within 180 days after the date of the order. The statute stays removal while the immigration judge decides that motion. Do not hold the motion open waiting for one more document.
• A sworn statement. The panel excused a formal affidavit for someone without a lawyer. Do not rely on that. The Board told Trigueros Quizar what it thought was missing: “what he did and to whom he talked specifically when he arrived at the court, what actions the staff took, specifically, or what time he arrived.” Answer those questions and sign under penalty of perjury.
• Records from that day. Ask for them right away: a repair ticket, a note from the shop, phone records, a dated photograph, a message to someone saying you were stuck. In the Ninth Circuit, their absence should not sink a credible account. Under the Board’s approach, they may decide it.
• Documents that say what you claim. Trigueros Quizar’s receipt had the right shop and the wrong date. Before attaching anything, ask what it actually proves, and explain its limits in your statement.
• Your history. The agency pointed to an earlier missed hearing and an ignored order. If your file has anything like that, address it directly.
• The legal objection. State the Ninth Circuit rule and object to any demand for corroboration in the motion itself, while also giving the agency the evidence it says it wants. The two steps do not conflict.

For representation in a removal case, see our deportation defense practice.