United States Fourth Circuit

Petition for review of an order of removal by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which determined that petitioner cannot establish the good moral character required to apply for cancellation of removal as a result of his serving 181 days in jail for an illegal-entry conviction in violation of 8 U.S.C. section 1325(a), is denied in part and dismissed in part, where: 1) there are plausible reasons for Congress to have excluded from discretionary relief aliens who served 6 months for violating section 1325(a); 2) in order to establish eligibility for cancellation of removal, an applicant must show that he has been a person of good moral character during a 10 year period of being in the United States (section 1229b(b)(1)(B)), but petitioner did not argue that the 10 year good moral character period ended with the issuance of the Notice to Appear and thus did not properly argue for why his jail term did not make him ineligible to apply for cancellation of removal; and 3) because petitioner did not administratively exhaust his claim that the 10 year good moral character period ended with the issuance of the Notice to Appear, this court lacks jurisdiction over that claim.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/06/2015
• Published 03/06/2015

Judges

• Traxler

Court

• United States Fourth Circuit

Counsel