Gonzalez

MEMORANDUM **

Osbaldo Serratos Gonzalez, a native and citizen of Mexico and permanent resident of the United States, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) order dismissing his appeal from an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) decision finding him removable for participating in alien smuggling. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252 . Reviewing for substantial evidence, “we affirm only if the agency has successfully carried [its] heavy burden of clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence.” Hernandez-Guadarrama v. Ashcroft, 394 F.3d 674, 679 (9th Cir.2005) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). Because the *630 agency’s proof that Petitioner knowingly participated in attempting to smuggle the undocumented alien Ruben Dominguez-Castellanos into the United States was not sufficient to carry its burden, we grant the petition for review. See 8 U.S.C. § 1182 (a)(6)(E)© (smuggler must “knowingly [have] encouraged, induced, assisted, abetted, or aided” another alien’s attempted illegal entry) (emphasis added).

The agency relied on the IJ’s speculation that Petitioner’s explanation that he drove to Tijuana and picked up Dominguez-Castellanos as a…