The U.S. Supreme Court held in Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 141 S. Ct. 1474 (2021), that a Notice to Appear, or NTA, must contain the time and place of the immigration court hearing in a single document in order to trigger the stop-time rule in cancellation of removal cases, and that a subsequently-issued hearing notice does not stop time if the NTA did not include the required information. The Niz-Chavez decision answered some, though by no means all, of the questions raised by the Supreme Court’s decision in Pereira v. Sessions, 138 S. Ct. 2105 (2018). This practice advisory discusses the Supreme Court’s decisions in Niz-Chavez and Pereira and provide strategies for practitioners to consider in cases where the client’s NTA was defective.

In Niz-Chavez v. Garland, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the “stop-time rule” — used to calculate the 10-year continuous physical presence requirement for non-lawful permanent resident cancellation of removal and the 7-year continuous residence requirement for permanent resident cancellation of removal — is only triggered when the Department of Homeland Security serves a single “Notice to Appear” that contains all of the statutorily required information, including the time and place of the immigration court hearing. As a result of the Court’s April 29, 2021 decision, noncitizens with deficient NTAs who have since completed the required period of time in the United States for cancellation of removal may be eligible to apply for that form of relief, if they meet the other requirements.

On April 23, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court issued Barton v. Barr, 590 U. S. ___ (2020), where it held that legal permanent residents (LPRs) in removal proceedings might be ineligible for cancellation of removal based on the applicability of the stop-time rule.