United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 18-1093 AMMA ADU GYAMFI, Petitioner, v. MATTHEW G. WHITAKER, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent. PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS Before Thompson, Kayatta, and Barron, Circuit Judges. Saher Joseph Macarius, Audrey Botros, and Law Offices of Saher Joseph Macarius LLC on brief for petitioner. Chad A. Readler, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, M. Jocelyn Lopez Wright, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, and Anna Juarez, Trial Attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation, on brief for respondent. January 10, 2019 Pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 43(c)(2), Acting Attorney General Matthew G. Whitaker has been substituted for former Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions, III as the respondent. THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. Petitioner Amma Adu Gyamfi ("Gyamfi") challenges the Board of Immigration Appeals's ("BIA") denial of her motion to reopen and its decision not to exercise its sua sponte authority to reopen her case and grant her request for an adjustment of status. For the reasons we detail below, we deny and dismiss Gyamfi's petition. BACKGROUND In March of 2004, Gyamfi, a native of Ghana and resident of Italy from 1992 until 2004, arrived in the U.S. on a nonimmigrant B-2 visa that granted her a six-month stay here. Gyamfi didn't leave after her permissible time here expired, and in November 2007, she married a U.S. citizen, Mark Parrish. That following April, Parrish filed an I-130 petition1 to get Gyamfi green-card status as the spouse of a U.S. citizen, but when the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") issued a notice of intent to deny the petition (because the newlyweds hadn't demonstrated the legitimacy of their marriage), Parrish wound up admitting in a 2009 DHS interview that he had made the petition as "a favor" to Gyamfi. Consequently, he withdrew the petition, and DHS denied Gyamfi's application for adjustment of status in April 2009. 1 An I-130 petition allows a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident to sponsor an alien relative's application for permanent resident status. - 2 - A month later, DHS initiated removal proceedings against Gyamfi: she was charged with removability as an alien who remained in the U.S. for a time longer than permitted after being admitted as a nonimmigrant visitor (8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(B)).2 Over the course of a couple of years (2009-2010) and a few hearings before an immigration judge ("IJ"), Gyamfi would first pursue a new I- 130 petition, then withdraw it, and in the end, seek asylum protection.3 Unpersuaded by her arguments and testimony relative to her lamentations of persecution, in March 2013, the IJ ordered her removed.4 The BIA affirmed the IJ and, in July 2014, dismissed the appeal. Gyamfi did not seek judicial review of that decision. Fast-forward three years to August 31, 2017: in light of an I-130 petition filed in November 2015 on her behalf by her recently naturalized U.S. citizen daughter5 (and which was approved 2 Gyamfi also was charged as an alien who was ...
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