AVTAR SINGH v. JEFFREY A. ROSEN, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL - Articles

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AVTAR SINGH v. JEFFREY A. ROSEN, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL

Posted by: Karen Belcher on Jan 7, 2021

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ON BRIEF: Genet Getachew, LAW OFFICE OF GENET GETACHEW, Brooklyn, New York, for Petitioner.

Attorneys 2: ON BRIEF: Lori B. Warlick, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent.

Judge(s): DAUGHTREY, NALBANDIAN, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges

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

MURPHY, Circuit Judge. Avtar Singh, an immigrant in this country unlawfully, applied for “cancellation of removal” to prevent his removal to India. The Board of Immigration Appeals denied his request because Singh failed to establish that his removal would cause “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to his family. 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(b)(1)(D). In essence, Singh now raises two arguments: that the Board wrongly held that he did not meet the requirements for cancellation of removal and that the immigration judge acted with unconstitutional bias. We traditionally could not review the “hardship” portion of Singh’s first argument because our cases treated the Board’s “hardship” decision as the type of discretionary call that falls outside our jurisdiction. The Supreme Court recently held, however, that courts have jurisdiction to review the Board’s “application of a legal standard to settled facts” (otherwise known as a mixed question of law and fact). See Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr, 140 S. Ct. 1062, 1068–69 (2020). And the Board’s application of the statutory “hardship” standard to an immigrant’s facts qualifies as such a mixed question. Guerrero-Lasprilla thus makes clear that we may review Singh’s hardship argument. That argument nevertheless fails on the merits. And we may not review Singh’s second argument even after Guerrero-Lasprilla because he did not exhaust his unconstitutional-bias claim with the Board. So we deny his petition for review in part and dismiss it in part.

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