Usma Acosta v. Blanche

── Usma Acosta v. Blanche ── Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Date: May 01, 2026 Category: General United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 25-1045 WILLIAM HERNANDO USMA ACOSTA, Petitioner, v. TODD BLANCHE, Acting United States Attorney General,* Respondent. PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS Before Gelpí, Thompson, and Montecalvo, Circuit Judges. Todd C. Pomerleau, with whom Jeffrey B. Rubin and Rubin Pomerleau PC, were on brief, for petitioner. Alexa Perlmutter, Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Office of Immigration Litigation, with whom Brett A. Shumate, Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Leslie McKay, Assistant Director, U.S. Department of Justice, and Thankful T. Vanderstar, Senior Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Office of Immigration Litigation, were on brief, for respondent. * Pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 43(c)(2), Acting United States Attorney General Todd Blanche is automatically substituted for former United States Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi. May 1, 2026  THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. Carlos Alberto Rendón Castañeda ("Rendón") left his homeland of Colombia and entered the United States in the 1990s. For nearly thirty years, he lived a typical American life. He married an American citizen, bought a home, paid his taxes, and raised a son who graduated from college. And in 2020, at his son's encouragement, Rendón began the culmination of his "American Dream" journey thus far -- his application to naturalize as a United States citizen. One part of the naturalization process is a routine fingerprint check. But for Rendón, that check turned out to be anything but routine. Instead of speeding his journey towards citizenship, it uncovered a harrowing secret: Rendón was not actually Rendón, but really William Hernando Usma Acosta ("Acosta"), today's petitioner.1 And Acosta was far from the normal suburban dad who Rendón purported to be. After shooting his first wife and his daughter in Colombia in 1994 -- killing the former and severely injuring the latter -- Acosta absconded to the United States and assumed the alias of Rendón, successfully evading the authorities' detection for almost three decades. While Acosta lived here (as Rendón), a trial was held in Colombia where he (in absentia) was convicted of aggravated murder, among other charges. And it turned 1Both Acosta's attorney and the government refer to him as Acosta, so we'll follow their lead in doing so. - 3 - out that Acosta's fingerprint scan connected him to an "INTERPOL Red Notice" -- close to, but not exactly, an international warrant -- seeking Acosta's extradition to Colombia to be punished for those crimes. The Department of Homeland Security arrested Acosta in 2022, commencing a series of proceedings resulting in his removal to Colombia. He asks us to review the decisions of the immigration judge ("IJ") and the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA") leading to his removal.2 After carefully considering all his arguments, we deny most and dismiss the remainder for lack of jurisdiction. Read on to see why. FACTS A We'll start with Acosta's origin story.3 He grew up in La Estrella, what he described as a "mid-sized town" in Antioquia, one of Colombia's thirty-two administrative departments (which are similar to states or provinces). He was