Steven Colloton

“ The BIA did not adopt the entirety of the IJ’s reasoning for rejecting Badasa’s claim. Rather, the BIA acknowledged that it was improper for the IJ to consider information from Wikipedia in evaluating Badasa’s submission on remand, and the government does not dispute [*3] that conclusion here. Wikipedia describes itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” urges readers to “ [f] ind something that can be improved, whether content, grammar or formatting, and make it better,” and assures them that “ [y] ou can’t break Wikipedia,” because “ [a] nything can be fixed or improved later.” ”

“ On remand, the DHS submitted several documents designed to explain the purpose of a laissez-passer, and argued that the document did not establish identity and nationality, but rather was “simply the granting of the authorization for an alien to travel to or from that country.” ”

“ The United States initiated civil forfeiture proceedings against $124,700 in United States currency, alleging that the money was subject to forfeiture as the proceeds of a drug transaction or as property used to facilitate the possession, transportation, sale, concealment, receipt, or distribution of a controlled substance. See 21 U.S.C.§ 881 (a) (6) . Three individuals filed claims opposing the forfeiture, and after a bench trial, the district court entered judgment in favor of the claimants. ”

“ In addition, the unidentified friend alerted Gonzolez that it was "bad" to carry more than $10,000 in cash on your person. Newly fearful of carrying his cash back to California by plane, Gonzolez testified that he decided to rent a car rather than fly, but because neither he nor his friend had a credit card, a third individual rented the car for him. ”

“ The BIA did say that Badasa was not prejudiced by the IJ’s reliance on Wikipedia, but it made no independent determination that Badasa failed to establish her identity. Whereas the BIA sometimes applies a “harmless error” standard when an IJ considers improper evidence or makes other procedural error, see Matter of [*4] Santos, 19 I. & N. Dec. ”

“ Wikipedia: Researching with Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia (last visited August 7, 2008) . Other articles, the site acknowledges, “may become caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint and can take some time – months perhaps – to regain a better-balanced consensus.” Id. As a consequence, Wikipedia observes, the website’s “radical openness means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state: for example, it could be in the middle of a large edit or it could have been recently vandalized.” ”

“ See Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 410-12 (2005) (Souter, J. dissenting) . As a result, this fact is virtually "meaningless and likely quite prejudicial." United States v. Carr, 25 F.3d 1194, 1216 (3d Cir. 1994) (Becker, J., concurring) . ”