Recent Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decisions give the impression DOGE must have fired all the BIA’s clerks and editors. On March 12, 2026, the BIA published a decision in Matter of Z-N-L-. The case is an appeal in a custody determination hearing, which as the name suggests, is an immigration judge determining whether a person should remain detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or can be released, most often with the posting of a bond to guarantee the non-citizen’s appearance at future hearings.
The recitation of the facts in the case omits when and how the person, Mr. Z-N-L- entered the United States. It mentions that he filed for asylum affirmatively with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services but does not tell us when. Reading between the lines, one can deduce that he entered with inspection because being involved in growing marijuana would render him ineligible for release if he was not admitted to the United States. Grounds of deportability apply to persons who entered with inspection. Deportability requires a criminal conviction. Gounds of inadmissibility apply to people who enter without inspection and those grounds of inadmissibility for cultivating marijuana do not require a conviction. They also require mandatory detention. Further, the BIA itself ruled in the Matter of Yajure Hurtado that a person who enters without inspection is ineligible for release from detention.
These scanty facts do not enlighten us about the true posture of the case. However, based on the facts, the most-likely scenario is that Mr. Z-N-L- entered the United States with a visa and then applied for asylum. Later, he got arrested while living and working at some sort of facility where marijuana was grown. Again, we are given no clue as to how long after he entered the United States and then filed an asylum application that he was arrested.
An immigration judge set a bond for Mr. Z-N-L-’s release. The government (ICE) appealed the decision. The BIA decided that the immigration judge erred in allowing for Mr. Z-N-L-’s release because of “significant discrepancies in the record regarding the respondent’s residence.”
What discrepancies? “According to the Form I-213, Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien, the government’s report discussing why the person was detained and removable, DHS agents encountered Mr. Z-N-L- living and working at a business that was illegally growing marijuana in Oklahoma. His bond request worksheet asserted he was detained by immigration officials “at [his] residence.” The BIA continued, “However, in the asylum application he filed with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the respondent indicated that he resides in California. The respondent’s purported sponsor also claims to live at the same address in California.” The discrepancy — the person asserted he lives in Oklahoma where he was arrested, but a previously-filed asylum application stated that he lives in California.
People are waiting for asylum application interviews for in excess of a decade. Since December 2025, USCIS is not making decisions in asylum cases. People move. If Mr. Z-N-L- filed his asylum application a short time ago, there could be a discrepancy. However, because no mention of when he filed for asylum, one would expect that he filed a long time ago. Thus, while he should have filed a change of address, with an application pending for years, changing his address for what is essentially a dormant application, would not have been a priority. Certainly, it should not be the sole basis to find him to be a flight risk.
But the BIA says it is not the sole reason. Reading carefully, looking for another discrepancy, all I can find is, “Furthermore, although the respondent’s alleged sponsor states in his affidavit that he is the respondent’s cousin, the respondent has submitted no evidence to verify this claimed relationship.”
Discrepancy means “the quality or state of disagreeing or being at variance.” . That he identifies a California resident as a cousin does not disagree or vary with other evidence. His not proving the relationship is not a discrepancy; at most it is a case of insufficient evidence. Mr. Z-N-L-’s sponsor necessarily provided proof of income and, most likely, a tax return. The law does not require that the sponsor be a relative nor the degree of consanguinity there must be. The sponsor asserted a willingness to support Mr. Z-N-L-. Is all that worthless because of a failure to prove he was Mr. Z-N-L-’s cousin? Apparently, to the government.
The BIA denies bond because of discrepancies, but identifies just one. It hides the ball about it – how long the asylum application was pending from when he first said he lived in California to when he moved to Oklahoma. In the list of well-thought-out, carefully constructed appellate decisions, this case is at the bottom.
Another recent deficient BIA decision is Matter of Arevalo-Vargas, published on March 16, 2026. This case is an appeal by the government of a grant of Cancellation of Removal by an immigration judge on August 20, 2019. The BIA glosses over the fact that the case has been pending with the BIA for nearly seven years. Cancellation of Removal for non-permanent residents requires showing that removal of a non-citizen would cause exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to U.S. citizen or permanent resident alien parents, spouse, or children of the non-citizen applicant. In this case, the hardship was to two children who were under 21 in 2019. Now they are 26 and 24. The BIA decided that they had “aged out during the pendency of this appeal.” While not the point of this blog posting, consider the unfairness in granting a person the right to remain in the United States because of exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to his children and then yanking the grant because the children grew up while the appeal was pending. The BIA could deny any Cancellation of Removal case simply by stalling the appeal until the children turn 21 or a qualifying relative parent or spouse dies. That would render Cancellation a form of relief wherein removal is stayed until the children grow up or other qualifying relatives disappear. That may be a satisfactory form of relief for some people, but it is not what the statute was for.
As the age-out of the children is dispositive of the respondent’s eligibility for relief, the BIA did not need to address any other issues in the case as was held in INS v. Bagamasbad, 429 U.S. 24, 25 (1976) (per curiam) (“As a general rule courts and agencies are not required to make findings on issues the decision of which is unnecessary to the results they reach”).
But the BIA did not end there. It went on to analyze whether the children really would have suffered from exceptional and extremely unusual hardship if their father was deported in 2019. The BIA concluded that it would “reverse the Immigration Judge’s determination that the respondent’s qualifying relatives would experience exceptional and extremely unusual hardship in the event of the respondent’s removal to Mexico.”
There were other issues raised by Mr. Z-N-L- in his appeal. Of those, the BIA wrote:
Based on the foregoing, we conclude that the evidence of record is insufficient as a matter of law to demonstrate that the respondent’s removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to his qualifying children. As this issue is dispositive of the respondent’s eligibility for relief, we need not address the Immigration Judge’s determination, or DHS’ appellate arguments, regarding good moral character. See INS v. Bagamasbad, 429 U.S. 24, 25 (1976) (per curiam) (“As a general rule courts and agencies are not required to make findings on issues the decision of .which is unnecessary to the results they reach”).
So what is it? Does the BIA make findings on unnecessary issues in a decision or not? Is the age issue the dispositive issue and the hardship discussion dicta? Is the hardship issue the dispositive issue and the age issue dicta? Are they both dispositive issues? If so, what to make of Bagamasbad? And what of the other issues? If hardship was worth delving into after resolving the age issue, why not the other issues at bar? I sure would like to know. Posted March 22, 2026.