Mario Santiago-Sarabia v. Todd Blanche

── Mario Santiago-Sarabia v. Todd Blanche ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Date: April 22, 2026 Category: General NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 22 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MARIO SANTIAGO-SARABIA, No. 21-70597 Petitioner, Agency No. A205-576-467 v. MEMORANDUM* TODD BLANCHE, Acting Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted April 14, 2026 Phoenix, Arizona Before: GRABER, HURWITZ, and DESAI, Circuit Judges. Petitioner Mario Santiago-Sarabia, a native and citizen of Mexico, timely seeks review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) dismissing his appeal from an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) order denying cancellation of removal and voluntary departure. Reviewing de novo the legal and constitutional issues that Petitioner raises, Gutierrez-Alm v. Garland, 62 F.4th * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. 1186, 1194 (9th Cir. 2023), we deny the petition. 1. The “good moral character” catchall provision found at 8 U.S.C. § 1101(f) is not unconstitutionally vague as applied to Petitioner. Petitioner was convicted in 2010 and 2013 for driving under the influence of intoxicants (“DUI”). After those two convictions, the government issued him a notice to appear. In 2014, Petitioner was convicted of DUI a third time. In 2018, he was arrested for DUI for a fourth time, and the criminal charge was pending at the time of his hearing before the IJ. The BIA concluded that Petitioner’s DUI arrests and convictions reflected poorly on his moral character. Whatever vagueness concerns may exist in the abstract, see, e.g., Konigsberg v. State Bar of Cal., 353 U.S. 252, 262–63 (1957); Johnson v. United States, 186 F.2d 588, 589–90 (2d Cir. 1951), the “good moral character” catchall provision in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(f) is not unconstitutionally vague as applied to Petitioner. DUI is universally criminalized in this country, and it creates a significant risk of harm to innocent bystanders. See, e.g., Matter of Castillo-Perez, 27 I. & N. Dec. 664, 670 (A.G. 2019) (citing “a national consensus that drunk and other forms of impaired driving are unacceptable conduct that imposes intolerable harms on society” in concluding that “[m]ultiple DUI convictions represent a repeated failure to meet the community’s moral standards”); Birchfield v. North Dakota, 579 U.S. 438, 443 (2016) (“Drunk drivers take a grisly toll on the Nation’s 2 roads.”); Ledezma-Cosino v. Sessions, 857 F.3d 1042, 1047 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc) (“Driving under the influence is, self-evidently, a public harm.”). Petitioner had “fair notice” that his four arrests—including two after he received the notice to appear—reflected poorly on his character, and the agency’s decision in the circumstances here is not “so standardless” that it amounts to “arbitrary enforcement.” Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591, 595 (2015); see United States v. Dang, 488 F.3d 1135, 1141 (9th Cir. 2007) (holding that “good moral character” was not vague as applied to specific criminal conduct); see also Jordan v. De George, 341 U.S. 223, 232 (1951) (holding that the phrase “crime involving moral turpitude” was indefinite in some cases but was not vague as applied to a crime involving fraud). 2. We decline to reach Petitioner’s argument that the statute is vague on its face. See Kashem v. Barr, 941