NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAY 19 2021 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT ANAHIT GHAZARYAN, No. 19-71877 Petitioner, Agency No. A077-848-709 v. MEMORANDUM* MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted May 11, 2021** Pasadena, California Before: OWENS, R. NELSON, and BADE, Circuit Judges. Anahit Ghazaryan, a native of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and citizen of Armenia, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) order dismissing her appeal from an Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) decision denying her applications for asylum, withholding of removal, protection under the * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). Convention Against Torture (“CAT”), and request for voluntary departure. Our jurisdiction is governed by 8 U.S.C. § 1252. We dismiss the petition in part and deny it in part. 1. Ghazaryan challenges the BIA’s decision to affirm the IJ’s determination that her asylum application was untimely. But the BIA declined to consider the issue because Ghazaryan failed to raise it. Thus, this issue is unexhausted, and we lack jurisdiction to review it. See Arsdi v. Holder, 659 F.3d 925, 929–30 (9th Cir. 2011). We therefore dismiss the petition as to Ghazaryan’s asylum claim. Her failure to raise the timeliness of her asylum application to the BIA further precludes our review of her claim to humanitarian asylum. 2. Ghazaryan asserts the BIA erred in upholding the IJ’s adverse credibility determination. Initially, we reject the government’s assertion that Ghazaryan did not exhaust this issue because she raised it in her briefing before the BIA and the BIA considered it on the merits. See Vizcarra-Ayala v. Mukasey, 514 F.3d 870, 873–74 (9th Cir. 2008). We must uphold an adverse credibility determination as “long as one of the identified grounds is supported by substantial evidence and goes to the heart of [the alien’s] claim of persecution.”1 Rizk v. Holder, 629 F.3d 1083, 1087 (9th Cir. 1 The REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-13, 119 Stat. 231, does not apply here because Ghazaryan filed her asylum application prior to May 11, 2005. See Lei Li v. Holder, 629 F.3d 1154, 1157 (9th Cir. 2011). 2 2011) (alteration in original) (citation omitted). Because the BIA did not adopt the IJ’s decision and reviewed it for clear error, we review only the “reasons explicitly identified by the BIA” in support of its conclusion and the “reasoning articulated in the IJ’s oral decision in support of those reasons.” Tekle v. Mukasey, 533 F.3d 1044, 1051 (9th Cir. 2008) (citation omitted). The BIA concluded that there were inconsistencies regarding Ghazaryan’s account of who beat her during a home bible study on January 11, 1999. Ghazaryan asserted in a declaration that Yerkrapah—members of a …
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