Cancellation of removal is a defense raised in immigration court, not a benefit applied for at USCIS. It exists in two forms under section 240A of the INA. One, at 240A(a), lets a permanent resident with a long history here keep the green card despite a ground of removal. The other, at 240A(b)(1), lets a person with no status at all become a permanent resident on the strength of ten years' presence and the hardship removal would cause to a citizen or resident spouse, parent or child. The second is the harder case and the more common one.
The permanent resident version
Under 240A(a) an immigration judge may cancel the removal of an inadmissible or deportable alien who has been a lawful permanent resident for at least five years, has resided in the United States continuously for seven years after being admitted in any status, and has not been convicted of an aggravated felony. The application is Form EOIR-42A. The seven years may begin with a student visa or a tourist entry; only the five years must be as a resident. There is no hardship element and no cap. What there is, in place of both, is discretion, and the Board spent 2025 and 2026 telling judges how to exercise it. In Matter of Mills, decided April 28, 2026, it reversed a grant to a permanent resident because an extensive criminal history outweighed his equities. In Matter of Richards a lack of candor about that history was held a significant adverse factor, and in Matter of Germain charges that never produced a conviction still counted against the respondent.
The nonpermanent resident version
Under 240A(b)(1) the applicant must show ten years of continuous physical presence immediately before the application, good moral character throughout those years, no conviction under INA 212(a)(2), 237(a)(2) or 237(a)(3), and that removal "would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship" to a spouse, parent or child who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. EOIR's own summary adds the fifth element: the judge must find the applicant deserves the relief as a matter of discretion. The application is Form EOIR-42B, and a grant adjusts the applicant to permanent residence.
Presence is counted strictly. Under 240A(d)(2) any single trip of more than 90 days, or trips totaling more than 180 days, breaks it. The form itself requires every U.S. address for at least ten years and police records from each place the applicant lived.
A third form, at 240A(b)(2), serves battered spouses and children of citizens and residents: three years of presence, good moral character, and extreme hardship to the applicant, a child or a parent. It is described in VAWA Self-Petitions and the I-360.
The stop-time rule
The ten years, and the seven, do not run forever. Under 240A(d)(1) the period ends when the person is served a notice to appear under INA 239(a), or when the person commits an offense listed in 212(a)(2) that makes them inadmissible or removable. The rule does not apply to the battered-spouse version.
For years the government served notices that left the hearing date blank, and the Supreme Court has twice said those documents do not stop the clock. In Pereira v. Sessions (2018) a notice that omits the time or place is not a notice to appear under 239(a), and the government conceded that "almost 100 percent" of its notices did. In Niz-Chavez v. Garland (2021) a later hearing notice cannot repair it: the stop-time trigger is a single document with everything in it. A person whose defective notice was served in year six may reach year ten while the case is pending.
The Board's answer came in two decisions. Matter of Fernandes (2022) held that the time-and-place requirement is a claim-processing rule rather than a jurisdictional one, that an objection is timely if raised before pleadings close, that a timely objector need not show prejudice, and that a judge may let DHS fix the notice rather than terminate. Matter of Aguilar Hernandez (2024) closed the most convenient fix: DHS cannot cure a missing date by filing Form I-261. And in Matter of Chen (2023) the Board confirmed that a final removal order does not itself stop the clock.
The Supreme Court then limited the doctrine's reach into old in absentia orders. In Campos-Chaves v. Garland, decided June 14, 2024, a person ordered removed for missing a hearing can reopen for lack of notice only by showing they received neither the original notice nor the later hearing notice for that hearing. Where the later notice arrived with a date on it, the defect in the first document does not reopen the case.
The consequence for cancellation is procedural and unforgiving: object to a defective notice before pleadings close, or the objection is lost.
Hardship
The standard is not defined in the statute and has been built by the Board. Matter of Monreal (2001) set it: hardship "substantially beyond that which would ordinarily be expected to result from the alien's deportation," though not necessarily "unconscionable," weighed by the ages, health and circumstances of the qualifying relatives. A lower standard of living or worse schools abroad does not suffice on its own. Matter of Andazola (2002) applied it against an unmarried mother of citizen children aged six and eleven. Matter of Recinas (2002), decided by the full Board, applied it for a divorced mother who was the sole support of six children, four of them citizens, with no family in Mexico and no other way to immigrate. Those two cases mark the boundary, and it sits closer to Andazola.
Matter of J-J-G- (2020) added a rule for medical claims: the relative must have a serious condition and, if the relative would leave with the applicant, adequate care must be shown to be unavailable in the country of removal, with the applicant bearing the burden of saying whether the relative goes or stays.
The Board's 2025 and 2026 precedents push further. Matter of Buri Mora (July 21, 2025): economic loss and separation are not enough where the children stay and their treatment continues. Matter of Arevalo-Vargas (March 16, 2026): children who turned 21 during the years the case took are no longer qualifying relatives. Matter of Pelagio Mendoza (April 3, 2026): a parent's testimony about a child's condition is generally insufficient where medical records or expert reports could have been produced. Matter of Lopez-Davila (July 16, 2026): a parent's choice to leave a citizen child behind without parental care does not by itself create the hardship, and parental care is not the only care that counts. And in Matter of L-L-R- a father who paid a smuggler to bring his own child across was held barred from good moral character altogether.
What survived is judicial review. In Wilkinson v. Garland, decided March 19, 2024, the Supreme Court held that applying the hardship standard to the facts is a mixed question of law and fact that a court of appeals may review under 8 U.S.C. 1252(a)(2)(D). The Third Circuit had called it discretionary and unreviewable; six justices voted to reverse. A denial can now be taken to a federal court on the question whether the judge applied Monreal correctly, though not on the weight given to the evidence.
The cap
Congress permits no more than 4,000 grants of 240A(b) cancellation and suspension of deportation in a fiscal year. Under 8 CFR 1240.21, once the numbers are exhausted "further decisions to grant such relief must be reserved" until a number becomes available in a later year. The procedure is OPPM 17-04, in force since January 4, 2018: when the cap is near, the Chief Immigration Judge instructs judges to reserve any decision granting relief; denials are issued at once; detained cases are decided throughout the year; each concluded case is stamped with a "CoR Cap Date" that follows it through appeal. A person who wins at the hearing may therefore receive nothing but a note that the decision is reserved, and wait for the next October. The cap does not touch 240A(a).
What it costs
H.R. 1 attached statutory fees to both forms in 2025, and EOIR's January 21, 2026 notice set the fiscal 2026 amounts. With the $100 regulatory fee, the EOIR-42A now costs $710 and the EOIR-42B $1,640, effective February 1, 2026, plus $30 per person for biometrics paid to DHS. The form instructions, revised February 2025, still say $100; EOIR's Forms and Fees page has the current figures. Since February 23, 2026 the court takes no checks or money orders; everything goes through the EOIR Payment Portal, a change written into 8 CFR 1103.7 by an interim final rule on June 11. The fiscal 2027 adjustment, published August 21, takes the totals to $730 and $1,690 on October 1, 2026. An appeal to the Board on Form EOIR-26 costs $1,030 now and $1,060 from October. A filing without the fee or a fee waiver request is rejected.
What to do
- Fix the clock first. Find the date the notice to appear was served and read it for a time and place. If it has none, object before pleadings close and calculate the ten years to the date of a compliant notice, if one ever came.
- Count the days out of the country against the 90-day and 180-day limits, from passport stamps and travel records, before anyone else does.
- Build the hardship file the Board now demands: medical records and expert reports rather than testimony, school and psychological evaluations, evidence of care available and unavailable abroad, and a decision, stated on the record, whether each relative goes or stays.
- Watch the ages. A child who will turn 21 before the individual hearing is a claim that evaporates; a continuance can be fatal.
- Budget $1,640 plus $30 a head and pay it through the portal before filing; the receipt goes in with the application. File before October 1 if the case is ready.
- Preserve the legal question at every stage. After Wilkinson, whether the judge applied the standard correctly is reviewable in the court of appeals; whether the facts were weighed correctly is not.
Ten years of presence buys an application. Everything after that is proof, and the Board has spent two years raising the price.