NUZAIRA MAHFUZ RAHMAN v. PAMELA BONDI, Attorney General - Articles

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NUZAIRA MAHFUZ RAHMAN v. PAMELA BONDI, Attorney General

Posted by: Azya Thornton on Mar 13, 2025

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ON BRIEF: Blake P. Somers, BLAKE P. SOMERS LLC, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Petitioner.

Attorneys 2: ON BRIEF: Elizabeth K. Ottman, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent.

Judge(s): THAPAR, BUSH, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges

Court Appealed: On Petition for Review from the Board of Immigration Appeals

MURPHY, Circuit Judge. The immigration laws list many reasons why an immigrant may not be admissible into the United States, but they also give the Attorney General discretion to waive some of these grounds for inadmissibility. See 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(9)(B)(v), (i)(1). To obtain this type of waiver, an immigrant must show “to the satisfaction of the Attorney General that the refusal of admission to such immigrant alien would result in extreme hardship” to a qualifying relative. Id. § 1182(a)(9)(B)(v); see also id. § 1182(i)(1). The Board of Immigration Appeals in this case held that Nuzaira Rahman had failed to establish the required hardship and thus denied her requested waivers. Rahman asks us to review the Board’s hardship conclusion. Yet the immigration laws broadly deprive us of jurisdiction to review these discretionary denials. See id. § 1252(a)(2)(B). Rahman responds that the laws allow us to review “questions of law” even in this waiver context. Id. § 1252(a)(2)(D). She adds that the Supreme Court has held that the Board’s hardship finding in a different context falls within this jurisdictional safe harbor. See Wilkinson v. Garland, 601 U.S. 209, 212 (2024). Unlike the hardship provisions in this case, though, the hardship provision in Wilkinson did not clarify that an immigrant must prove hardship “to the satisfaction of the Attorney General.” We must give effect to this language. It shows that Congress committed the hardship inquiry to agency discretion in the waiver context. We thus lack jurisdiction over the Board’s hardship conclusion and dismiss Rahman’s petition for review.

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