United States Court of Appeals 

For the First Circuit 

No. 17-1855 

MARK KWADWO KUFFOUR, 

Petitioner, 

v. 

JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS III, 

United States Attorney General, 

Respondent. 

PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF 

THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS 

Before 

Torruella, Lipez, and Barron, 

Circuit Judges. 

Taryn Pleva and the Law Offices of Jan Allen Reiner on brief 

for petitioner. 

Chad A. Readler, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil 

Division, Anthony P. Nicastro, Assistant Director, Office of 

Immigration Litigation, and Sabatino F. Leo, Trial Attorney, 

Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, on brief for 

respondent. 

October 26, 2018 
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LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. Petitioner Mark Kwadwo Kuffour 

challenges the Board of Immigration Appeals' ("BIA" or "Board") 

denial of his motion to reconsider its order refusing to reopen 

his case. Finding no abuse of discretion, we deny his petition 

for review. 

I. 

Kuffour is a citizen of Ghana who unlawfully entered the 

United States in 1997. In July 2009, he was served with a notice 

to appear charging him with removability. Kuffour engaged attorney 

Obadan Iziokhai, who submitted pleadings on his behalf seeking 

cancellation of removal based on hardship to his U.S.-citizen 

daughter and voluntary departure. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1229b(b), 

1229c(b). However, Iziokhai withdrew from representing Kuffour at 

the start of his March 2014 removal hearing, and Kuffour proceeded 

at the hearing pro se. 

The Immigration Judge ("IJ") denied Kuffour's request 

for cancellation of removal on the ground that he had not shown 

that his daughter would suffer the requisite "exceptional and 

extremely unusual hardship" to justify that relief. See id. § 

1229b(b)(1)(D). The IJ also denied voluntary departure. Kuffour 

then hired attorney Randy Feldman to assist him in filing an appeal 

to the BIA. 

Before the BIA, Kuffour challenged the IJ's voluntary 

departure ruling and asked, based on an executive order, that the 
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Board administratively close his proceedings. He did not appeal 

the denial of cancellation of removal. The BIA affirmed the IJ's 

denial of voluntary departure and declined to administratively 

close the proceedings. Kuffour once again obtained new counsel 

and moved to reopen the proceedings based on the asserted 

ineffective assistance of his two previous attorneys. Kuffour 

claimed that the attorneys' deficient representation had 

"eliminated [his] right to pursue his application for Cancellation 

of Removal and thereby[] to potentially remain in the United States 

if his application was granted." Kuffour claimed that, but for 

the ineffective assistance, he would have provided documents 

showing his eligibility for cancellation of removal; however, he 

did not submit such documents with the motion to reopen. 

In denying the motion to reopen, the BIA observed that 

Kuffour had "proffered no evidence in support of his asserted 

eligibility for either cancellation of removal . . . or . . . 

voluntary departure" and, hence, had failed to show "patent error 

or prejudice." The BIA also found that the motion did not comply 

with the procedural requirements for bringing an ineffective 

assistance of counsel claim in immigration proceedings. See 

Punzalan v. Holder, 575 F.3d 107, 109 n.1 (1st Cir. 2009); Matter 

of Lozada, 19 I. & N. Dec. 637, 639 (BIA 1988). 

Kuffour did not file a petition for review of that 

decision, but he instead sought reconsideration from the BIA. In 
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his motion to reconsider, Kuffour asserted that the BIA made 

factual errors when it concluded that he had neither proven 

eligibility for cancellation of removal nor shown ineffective 

assistance of counsel. He further claimed that the BIA "made a 

mistake of fact and law" when it concluded that he had not 

satisfied the procedural requirements for an ineffective 

assistance claim. 

The BIA denied the motion to reconsider. It observed, 

inter alia, that Kuffour "does not identify any prior argument 

presented on appeal that was overlooked by the Board[;] nor does 

[he] identify any error of law or fact in the [original] decision 

based on the record then before the Board." The BIA also 

reiterated that Kuffour had not complied with the procedural 

requirements for filing an ineffective assistance claim. This 

petition for review followed. 

II. 

We review the BIA's denial of a motion to reconsider for 

abuse of discretion. See, e.g., Muyubisnay-Cungachi v. Holder, 

734 F.3d 66, 70 (1st Cir. 2013). Under this deferential standard, 

we will "uphold the BIA's decision unless that decision is 

'arbitrary, irrational, or contrary to law.'" Liu v. Mukasey, 553 

F.3d 37, 40 (1st Cir. 2009) (quoting Abdullah v. Gonzales, 461 

F.3d 92, 99 (1st Cir. 2006)). 
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A motion to reconsider is "intended only to cure errors 

(factual or legal) in the prior BIA decision." Martinez-Lopez v. 

Holder, 704 F.3d 169, 172 (1st Cir. 2013) (discussing 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1229a(c)(6)). Such a motion must therefore specify the asserted 

errors, 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(b)(1), and not merely "regurgitate[] 

contentions that were previously made and rejected." Liu, 553 

F.3d at 39; see also In re O-S-G-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 56, 58 (BIA 

2006) ("[A] motion to reconsider is not a process by which a party 

may submit, in essence, the same brief presented on appeal and 

seek reconsideration by generally alleging error in the prior Board 

decision."). A motion to reconsider is also not the proper vehicle 

for introducing new facts; reconsideration "contests the 

correctness of the original decision based on the previous factual 

record, as opposed to a motion to reopen, which seeks a new hearing 

based on new or previously unavailable evidence." In re O-S-G-, 

24 I. & N. Dec. at 57-58; see also 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c). 

Accordingly, our task is not to examine the merits of 

Kuffour's ineffective assistance claim to determine whether the 

BIA correctly denied his motion to reconsider based on that claim.1 

Rather, we evaluate only whether the BIA abused its discretion in 

denying the motion on the ground that Kuffour failed to identify 

 1 The original denial of the motion to reopen is not before 

us because, as noted above, Kuffour did not file a petition for 

review of that decision. 
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a specific legal or factual error in the BIA's original 

adjudication of his motion to reopen. Liu, 553 F.3d at 39. 

We find no such abuse of discretion. In his motion to 

reconsider, Kuffour asserted that the BIA erred in refusing to 

reopen his proceedings, but he supported that assertion only by 

reiterating the same arguments that the BIA previously had 

considered and rejected. He did not point to specific errors in 

the BIA's assessment of his contentions. Although Kuffour 

submitted new documents with his motion that might have been 

relevant to his eligibility for cancellation of removal, those new 

materials -- as noted above -- could not be added to the record at 

that stage of the proceedings. Without identifying an error of 

law or fact in the BIA's denial of reconsideration based on the 

record then before the agency, Kuffour's motion cannot succeed. 

Finally, we need not consider whether Kuffour's motion 

to reconsider properly specified errors in the BIA's ruling that 

he failed to comply with the procedural requirements for an 

ineffective assistance claim. Because Kuffour has not shown that 

the BIA abused its discretion in refusing to revisit the motion to 

reopen based on the merits of the ineffective assistance claim, 

its determination on the procedural issue is of no consequence.2

 2 Kuffour's petition for review also appears to claim error 

in the BIA's refusal to reconsider its denial of the motion to 

reopen proceedings based on the IJ's "misconduct" in allowing 
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III. 

For the foregoing reasons, the BIA did not abuse its 

discretion in rejecting Kuffour's motion to reconsider. We thus 

deny the petition for review. 

So ordered. 

 

 

Iziokhai to withdraw on the day of his hearing. Among other flaws 

with such a claim, Kuffour did not seek reopening on that basis.