UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 15-1397

KENNETH EKOW NKETSIAH,

Petitioner,

v.

LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General,

Respondent.

On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration 

Appeals.

Submitted: January 25, 2016 Decided: March 9, 2016

Before AGEE, THACKER, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.

Petition denied by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Steven Kreiss, Washington, D.C., for Petitioner. Benjamin C. 

Mizer, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Terri J. 

Scadron, Assistant Director, Manuel A. Palau, Office of 

Immigration Litigation, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 

Washington, D.C., for Respondent.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:

Kenneth Ekow Nketsiah, a native and citizen of Ghana, 

petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ order 

denying Nketsiah’s motion for reconsideration of the Board’s 

prior order dismissing his appeal of the immigration judge’s 

order denying Nketsiah’s application for a stand-alone waiver of 

inadmissibility, see 8 U.S.C. § 1182(i) (2012), and ordering him 

removed to Ghana. We deny the petition for review.

A motion to reconsider asserts that the Board made an error 

in its earlier decision, and the movant must specify that error 

of fact or law. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(b)(1) (2015). The denial 

of a motion to reconsider is reviewed for abuse of discretion. 

Urbina v. Holder, 745 F.3d 736, 741 (4th Cir. 2014); 8 C.F.R. 

§ 1003.2(a) (2015). This court will reverse a denial of a 

motion to reconsider “only if the Board acted arbitrarily, 

irrationally, or contrary to law.” Narine v. Holder, 559 F.3d 

246, 249 (4th Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Nketsiah does not satisfy this high standard. Our review 

of the record, including the transcript of Nketsiah’s 

administrative proceedings, reveals substantial evidence to 

support the Board’s factual determination that, when the 

immigration judge denied Nketsiah’s waiver application, no other 

form of relief — including a request for voluntary departure —

was pending. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B) (2012)
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(“[A]dministrative findings of fact are conclusive unless any 

reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the 

contrary.”). We thus discern no abuse of discretion in the 

Board’s denial of Nketsiah’s motion for reconsideration of this 

issue. 

In addition to the claimed factual error, Nketsiah also 

presented in his motion for reconsideration an intricate legal 

argument to support Nketsiah’s position that his request for 

voluntary departure remained pending when the immigration judge 

denied the waiver application. Nketsiah advances the same line 

of argument in this court. 

But “[a] motion to reconsider is not a mechanism by which a 

party may file a new brief before the Board raising additional 

legal arguments that are unrelated to those issues raised before 

the Immigration Judge and on appeal.” In re O-S-G-, 24 I. & N. 

Dec. 56, 58 (B.I.A. 2006). The Board cited this authority to 

supports its denial of this aspect of Nketsiah’s motion to 

reconsider, in which Nketsiah asserted “a legal argument that 

could have been raised earlier in the proceedings.” Id. We 

likewise discern no abuse of discretion in this ruling, which 

Nketsiah does not substantively challenge in his opening brief. 

See Martinez-Lopez v. Holder, 704 F.3d 169, 172 (1st Cir. 2013) 

(surveying circuit authority and joining the other circuit 

courts of appeals that have held “that the office of a motion to 
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reconsider in an immigration case, under current law, is 

ordinarily limited to the consideration of factual or legal 

errors in the disposition of issues previously raised”). 

Accordingly, we deny the petition for review. We dispense 

with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are 

adequately presented in the materials before this court and 

argument would not aid the decisional process.

PETITION DENIED