Nixon Santos Deleon v. Merrick Garland


NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JAN 31 2023 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT NIXON SANTOS DELEON, No. 19-72894 20-72498 Petitioner, Agency No. A087-682-901 v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney MEMORANDUM* General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted January 27, 2023** San Francisco, California Before: GOULD, RAWLINSON, and BRESS, Circuit Judges. Petitioner Nixon Santos Diaz (“Santos”), a native and citizen of Guatemala, petitions for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) decision denying his application for cancellation of removal and his subsequent motion to reopen. We lack jurisdiction to review the agency’s “exceptional and extremely unusual * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). hardship” determination related to an application for cancellation of removal unless a plausible constitutional question or question of law is raised. Romero- Torres v. Ashcroft, 327 F.3d 887, 888 (9th Cir. 2003); Vilchiz-Soto v. Holder, 688 F.3d 642, 644 (9th Cir. 2012). We review a denial of a motion to reopen for abuse of discretion. Aguilar Fermin v. Barr, 958 F.3d 887, 892 (9th Cir. 2020). We conclude that we do not have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(B)(i) to review the BIA’s denial of Santos’s application for cancellation of removal, but we have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 to review the denial of a motion to reopen. We dismiss Santos’s petition to review the denial of his application for cancellation of removal and deny his petition to review the denial of his motion to reopen. 1. The immigration courts did not lack jurisdiction due to an initially deficient notice to appear (“NTA”). Under our prior precedent in Karingithi v. Whitaker, 913 F.3d 1158, 1160 (9th Cir. 2019), and Aguilar Fermin v. Barr, 958 F.3d at 895, we held that an initial NTA that lacked the required regulatory contents did not deprive the immigration courts of jurisdiction and that the NTA could later be cured, as it was in Santos’s case. The immigration courts properly had jurisdiction in the present case. See also United States v. Bastide-Hernandez, 39 F.4th 1187, 1193 (9th Cir. 2022) (en banc). 2. Santos did not raise a colorable question of law that would vest us with 2 jurisdiction over the BIA’s denial of his application for cancellation of removal. Despite Santos’s claims, we do not have jurisdiction to review whether the BIA or the Immigration Judge (“IJ”), to the extent the BIA’s opinion incorporated the IJ’s reasoning, properly weighed the evidence. 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(B)(i); see also Vilchiz-Soto, 688 F.3d at 644. Though we have previously held that we have jurisdiction to “review whether the IJ considered relevant evidence in making [the otherwise unreviewable discretionary] decision,” Szonyi v. Barr, 942 F.3d 874, 896 (9th Cir. 2019), we still require …

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