Jaime Cedillos Flores v. William Barr


NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JAN 16 2020 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT JAIME G. CEDILLOS FLORES, AKA No. 18-72527 Jaime Geovany Cedillos, AKA Jamie Geovany Cedillos, Agency No. A072-452-785 Petitioner, MEMORANDUM* v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted January 8, 2020** San Francisco, California Before: W. FLETCHER and FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judges, and HILLMAN,*** District Judge. * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). *** The Honorable Timothy Hillman, United States District Judge for the District of Massachusetts, sitting by designation. Petitioner Jaime Cedillos Flores, a native and citizen of El Salvador, seeks review of a Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) decision affirming an Immigration Judge’s denial of withholding of removal under 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3) and of relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”), see 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c). We review for abuse of discretion the agency’s particularly serious crime determination, Arbid v. Holder, 700 F.3d 379, 383 (9th Cir. 2012), and review for substantial evidence the denial of CAT relief, Arteaga v. Mukasey, 511 F.3d 940, 944 (9th Cir. 2007). We deny the petition for review. The agency did not abuse its discretion in determining that Cedillos Flores’s conviction for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in violation of Texas Penal Code § 22.02(a)(2) qualifies as a particularly serious crime that renders him statutorily ineligible for withholding of removal. See Avendano-Hernandez v. Lynch, 800 F.3d 1072, 1077 (9th Cir. 2015) (explaining that our review of an agency’s particularly serious crime determination is “limited to ensuring that the agency relied on the ‘appropriate factors’ and ‘[]proper evidence’ to reach this conclusion” (alteration in original) (quoting Anaya-Ortiz v. Holder, 594 F.3d 673, 676 (9th Cir. 2010))). Because Cedillos Flores received a sentence of fewer than five years for that conviction, the agency applied the modified Matter of Frentescu, 18 I. & N. Dec. 244 (BIA 1982) factors, examining the type of sentence imposed, the nature of the conviction, and the circumstances and underlying facts of the 2 conviction. See In re N-A-M-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 336, 342 (BIA 2007). Applying these factors, the agency found a two-year prison sentence to be lengthy and interpreted the underlying facts of the conviction—showing that Cedillos Flores pointed a firearm at the victim, demanded the victim give him a baseball bat, and laughed and drove away—to indicate the conviction constituted a particularly serious crime. Cedillos Flores does not argue that the agency applied the incorrect standard or did not consider the proper evidence—he contends only that the agency reached the wrong conclusions. We lack jurisdiction to address those arguments. Avendano-Hernandez, 800 F.3d at 1077 (explaining that we lack jurisdiction to “reweigh the evidence and reach ...

Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals