Cancellation of removal under § 240A(b)(1) of the Immigration & Nationality Act (INA); Whether petitioner’s deportation would cause his U.S.-citizen children “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship”; 8 USC § 1229b(b)(1)(D); Standard of review; Urias-Orellana v Bondi; Substantial-evidence review under the Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA); § 1252(b)(4)(B); Immigration judge (IJ); Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA)

The court denied petitioner-Baltazar Us’s petition for review of the denial of his application for cancellation of removal based on “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” for his U.S.-citizen children, holding for the first time in this circuit that the IIRIRA’s substantial-evidence review applies to cancellation-of-removal hardship determinations. Baltazar Us, a native and citizen of Guatemala, entered the U.S. “unlawfully in 2000 and has been living here since. [He] is the sole provider for his family[.]” An IJ denied his application for cancellation of removal, rejecting his argument that removing him from the country would “cause his U.S.-citizen children to suffer an ‘exceptional and extremely unusual hardship.’” The BIA affirmed. On petition for review, the court concluded that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Urias-Orellana “was not limited to the asylum context” – rather, it contemplated “the same standard of review for any kind of mixed determination involving the application of the INA to a given set of established facts reviewed under § 242 of that statute.” And the court reviews “mixed determinations involving the application of § 240A(b)(1)’s hardship standard to the IJ’s factual findings under § 242.” Thus, the BIA’s “determination that a given set of undisputed facts does not rise to the level of exceptional and extremely unusual hardship is ‘conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.’” The court held that in this case, “no reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude that Baltazar Us’s ‘removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship’ for his two U.S.-citizen children.” It rejected his argument that the BIA erred by looking “at the factors in isolation,” rather than considering them “in the aggregate,” and found that the “hardships, even in the aggregate, do not suggest anything truly extraordinary would result from Baltazar Us’s deportation.” Based on the record, it held that no reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to disagree with the IJ’s and the BIA’s “conclusion that the hardships from removal would not go ‘beyond that which would normally be expected to occur upon the removal of a close family member.’” Lastly, it denied his request to have the case remanded to the BIA.