PUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 18-1904 CYRILLE NAZAIRE KOUAMBO, Petitioner, v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Argued: October 29, 2019 Decided: November 25, 2019 Before WILKINSON, NIEMEYER, and DIAZ, Circuit Judges. Petition for review dismissed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Niemeyer and Judge Diaz joined. ARGUED: Nefertiti Irene Alves, JOHNSON & ASSOCIATES, P.C., Vienna, Virginia, for Petitioner. David Schor, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. ON BRIEF: Mariam Masumi Daud, JOHNSON & ASSOCIATES, P.C., Vienna, Virginia, for Petitioner. Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General, Emily Anne Radford, Assistant Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. WILKINSON, Circuit Judge: Petitioner Cyrille Nazaire Kouambo, a citizen of the Central African Republic (“CAR”) seeks judicial review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying his application for asylum in the United States. In that order, issued July 9, 2018, the BIA affirmed the holding of an Immigration Judge (“IJ”) that Kouambo was statutorily precluded from seeking asylum because he had “firmly resettled” in a third country prior to arriving in the United States. At the same time, the BIA did not address the IJ’s decision to grant Kouambo withholding of removal and remanded the case to the IJ for mandatory background and security checks. Because we conclude that the BIA’s July 9 remand order does not constitute a “final order of removal” within the meaning of 8 U.S.C. § 1252, we dismiss Kouambo’s petition for lack of jurisdiction. I. Kouambo was born in the CAR on July 26, 1970. He is a member of the Yakoma ethnic group and, along with many of his family members, was a supporter of André Kolingba, a fellow Yakoma who served as President of CAR from 1981-1993. In 1993, Kolingba lost his reelection bid to General Ange-Félix Patassé, a member of the Kaba ethnic group. Soon thereafter, Patassé began a campaign of violence and discrimination against Yakomas who supported Kolingba. This campaign intensified after Kolingba launched a failed coup attempt in 2001. In the aftermath, several members of Kouambo’s family were tortured, imprisoned, and killed by Patassé’s allies. Fearing for his life, Kouambo fled the CAR. After a brief stay in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he eventually settled in the Republic of Congo (“ROC”), where he 2 remained for twelve years. During that period, Kouambo rented a home, completed medical school, obtained employment as a physician, married a Congolese woman, and had a child. Though the record is not completely free of uncertainty regarding his official immigration status, it is undisputed that in 2012 the ROC government issued Kouambo a document retroactively recognizing him as having been a refugee in the ROC since 2001. Though his life in the ROC appeared normal in many respects, Kouambo claims that he continued to face persecution. In ...
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