De Zavala v. Gonzales

MEMORANDUM *

Maria Ceballos De Zavala petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ affirmance of the Immigration Judge’s denial of her motion for suppression of evidence and denial of her application for cancellation of removal. We dismiss for lack of jurisdiction in part and deny in part.

(1) The claims made by Ceballos were not exhausted by presentation of them to the BIA, or, in general, even to the IJ. Therefore, with the exception of her equal protection claim, we lack jurisdiction to consider the issues she now raises. See Barron v. Ashcroft, 358 F.3d 674, 677-78 (9th Cir.2004). Of course, Ceballos cannot avoid that result by casting her claims in the form of due process issues when, in fact, they point to problems that could have been resolved by the BIA. See Liu v. Waters, 55 F.3d 421, 425-26 (9th Cir.1995); Rashtabadi v. INS, 23 F.3d 1562, 1567 (9th Cir.1994).

One of the issues, Ceballos’s suppression motion, merits special mention because she did raise a suppression issue before the BIA. However, the IJ denied suppression on two bases: (a) the regulation regarding prequestioning warnings was not violated at secondary inspection, and, (b) even if it were,…