Rangel-Fuentes v. Garland, No. 23-9511 (10th Cir. 2024)
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The case involves Cristina Rangel-Fuentes, a Mexican citizen who entered the United States without inspection in 1995 or 1996 and has remained since. She was charged with inadmissibility in 2012 after being arrested for contempt of court. Rangel conceded her inadmissibility but applied for cancellation of her removal in 2014, arguing that her removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to her youngest son, Fernando. In 2017, Rangel also filed an application for asylum, citing recent incidents of violence against her family members in Mexico.
The immigration judge declared the record closed in September 2017, when Fernando was twenty years old and thus a “child” for the purposes of cancellation of removal. However, due to the yearly statutory cap on the number of cancellations of removal the Attorney General may grant, the immigration judge did not issue a written opinion until September 2019. By that time, Fernando was no longer a "child" under the statute. The immigration judge also denied Rangel’s asylum application, ruling that Rangel waited too long to apply for asylum upon learning of her cousin’s murder and that she could not show a well-founded fear of future persecution on account of her membership in a particular social group.
Rangel appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which rejected her argument that the immigration judge was required to fix Fernando’s age at the time of the evidentiary hearing. The BIA also determined that Rangel had waived her argument with respect to the immigration judge’s denial of her asylum application.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that the BIA’s interpretation of the statute regarding the age of a qualifying child for the purposes of cancellation of removal was reasonable and entitled to deference. However, the court agreed with Rangel’s separate argument that the BIA abused its discretion by treating her asylum appeal as waived. The court thus denied the petition for review as to cancellation of removal but granted the petition in part and remanded for the BIA to address the merits of Rangel’s asylum appeal.
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