USCA11 Case: 21-10600 Document: 35-1 Date Filed: 04/05/2023 Page: 1 of 34 [PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 21-10600 ____________________ ROSENDO PONCE FLORES, Petitioner, versus U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent. ____________________ Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals Agency No. A077-460-794 ____________________ USCA11 Case: 21-10600 Document: 35-1 Date Filed: 04/05/2023 Page: 2 of 34 2 Opinion of the Court 21-10600 Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, and HULL and MARCUS, Circuit Judges. HULL, Circuit Judge: Rosendo Ponce Flores petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s (“BIA”) order (1) affirming the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) denial of his application for cancellation of removal and dismissing his appeal, and (2) denying his motion to reopen and remand his removal proceedings. Ponce Flores, a citizen of Mexico, conceded removability. This petition is about only his application for cancellation of his removal. The main grounds for both his appeal to the BIA and his motion to reopen were Ponce Flores’s claim that his counsel rendered ineffective assistance and denied him constitutional due process as to his cancellation-of- removal application. After review and with the benefit of oral argument, we conclude as to the denial of Ponce Flores’s application that: (1) cancellation of removal is a purely discretionary form of relief from removal; (2) Ponce Flores does not have a constitutionally protected liberty interest in that purely discretionary relief; and (3) therefore, Ponce Flores’s constitutional due process claim is meritless, and we lack jurisdiction to entertain it under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) § 242(a)(2)(D), 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D). To the extent Ponce Flores is challenging the BIA’s affirmance of the IJ’s determination that Ponce Flores has not satisfied the hardship requirement for eligibility for cancellation of USCA11 Case: 21-10600 Document: 35-1 Date Filed: 04/05/2023 Page: 3 of 34 21-10600 Opinion of the Court 3 removal under INA § 240A(b)(1), 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(b)(1)(D), we also lack jurisdiction to review that factual finding. As to Ponce Flores’s ineffective assistance claims in his motion to reopen and remand, we conclude that: (1) Ponce Flores cannot establish a constitutional due process violation based on the BIA’s denial of his motion to reopen because he does not have a protected liberty interest in either discretionary cancellation of removal or in the granting of a motion to reopen; (2) the BIA properly followed its legal precedent in Matter of Lozada, 19 I. & N. Dec. 637 (BIA 1988); and (3) to the extent Ponce Flores’s challenge to the denial of his motion to reopen rests on an argument that the BIA erred in ruling that he had not demonstrated that but for his counsel’s deficiencies he would have proved the requisite hardship, we lack jurisdiction to entertain this claim. I. BACKGROUND A. Ponce Flores’s Unlawful Entry Ponce Flores, a native and citizen of Mexico, first entered the United States in either 1995 or 1996. In 1999, Ponce Flores was arrested on charges of alien smuggling after …
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