Jerez Echeverria v. Garland

Case: 21-60181 Document: 00516631137 Page: 1 Date Filed: 02/01/2023

United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit FILED

February 1, 2023

No. 21-60181

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk Gonzalo Guanelger Jerez Echeverria,

Petitioner, versus

Merrick Garland, U.S. Attorney General,

Respondent. Petition for Review of an Order of the

Board of Immigration Appeals Agency No. A200 271 221

Before Richman, Chief Judge, and King and Higginson, Circuit Judges.

Per Curiam:*

Gonzalo Guanelger Jerez Echeverria petitions this court to review the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) dismissal of his appeal from the Immigration Judge’s (IJ) denial of his request for cancellation of removal. Echeverria’s claims challenge the BIA’s hardship determination.1 Because this court lacks jurisdiction to review such claims, we dismiss the petition

Case: 21-60181 Document: 00516631137 Page: 2 Date Filed: 02/01/2023

No. 21-60181 without assessing any potential timeliness or exhaustion bars to this court’s jurisdiction.

Echeverria, a native and citizen of Guatemala, was served a notice to appear charging him as being subject to removal for being present in the United States without having been admitted or paroled. Echeverria requested cancellation of removal after admitting those allegations and conceding removability. After the BIA vacated the IJ’s initial decision that Echeverria was ineligible for cancellation of removal based on his previous conviction for a crime of moral turpitude, the IJ on remand again denied cancellation of removal. In doing so it concluded that Echeverria failed to show his removal would cause exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to his United States citizen children. The BIA affirmed the IJ’s decision. Echeverria now petitions this court for review.

Echeverria advances several arguments. He contends that, in making its hardship determination, the BIA failed to assess his evidence properly and failed to reach the same result as in a factually similar case. He also argues that, in failing to do so, the BIA violated his due process rights.

This court lacks jurisdiction to review Echeverria’s claims. Under Patel v. Garland2 and Castillo-Gutierrez v. Garland,3 “the BIA’s determination that a citizen would face exceptional and extremely unusual hardship is an authoritative decision which . . . is beyond our review.”4

Case: 21-60181 Document: 00516631137 Page: 3 Date Filed: 02/01/2023

No. 21-60181 Echeverria’s arguments that the BIA failed to properly assess his evidence and failed to reach the same result as in a factually similar case are challenges to the BIA’s hardship determination. This court lacks jurisdiction to review such claims.

Additionally, Echeverria “may not—merely by phrasing his argument in legal terms—use those terms to cloak a request for review of the BIA’s discretionary decision, which is not a question of law.”5 Echeverria claims his due process rights were violated when the BIA failed to assess his evidence properly and failed to reach the same result as in a factually similar case. These are thinly-veiled challenges to the BIA’s hardship determination couched in legal terms. Again, we lack jurisdiction to review such claims.

* * * For the foregoing reasons we DISMISS the petition.

BIA improperly determined that [petitioner’s] children will not face ‘exceptional and extremely unusual hardship’ as a result of [petitioner’s] removal.”).