Escalante

MEMORANDUM **

Sandy Arody Escalante and his wife Blanca Yuniva Escalante, natives and citizens of Mexico, petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) order affirming without opinion an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) denial of their applications for cancellation of removal. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252 . We review de novo the IJ’s determination of purely legal questions. Molina-Estrada v. INS, 293 F.3d 1089, 1093 (9th Cir. 2002). We deny the petition.

The IJ properly denied the petitioners’ application for cancellation of removal because the petitioners conceded that they had no qualifying relative who would suffer exceptional and extremely unusual hardship if they were removed. See id. at 1093-94 (concluding that petitioner who failed to show evidence of qualifying relative was ineligible for cancellation of removal).

To the extent the petitioners seek to qualify for cancellation of removal based on the recent birth of their U.S. citizen daughter, this “new information” must be presented first to the BIA in a motion to reopen proceedings. See Ortiz v. INS, 179 F.3d 1148, 1152-53 (9th Cir.1999) (concluding that alien who could not raise an…