Menendez

MEMORANDUM

Linet Gisela Menendez (Menendez), a native and citizen of Guatemala, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA’s) denial of her motion to reopen removal proceedings to apply for asylum and withholding of removal.

By failing to raise the issue in her opening brief, Menendez waived any challenge to the BIA’s determination that the second motion to reopen was time-barred, number-barred, and did not meet the exception to the filing requirements as set forth at 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2 (c)(3)(h). See Martinez-Serrano v. I.N.S., 94 F.3d 1256, 1260 (9th Cir.1996) (noting that failure to address issue constitutes waiver); see also Fed. R.App. P. 28(a) (listing the requirements for appellants’ briefs). This unchallenged ground for the BIA’s denial of the motion was an independently adequate basis to support its decision. See Najmabadi v. Holder, 597 F.3d 983, 986 (9th Cir.2010) (observing that the BIA has broad discretion to grant or deny motions to reopen and listing “at least three independent grounds” that support such a denial) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Lin v. Holder, 588 F.3d 981, 986 (9th Cir.2009) (holding that to prevail on…