FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT DELPHINE A. ARREY, AKA Arrey No. 16-73373 Delphine Ayamba, Petitioner, Agency No. A208-595-387 v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, OPINION Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted December 18, 2018 San Francisco, California Filed February 26, 2019 Before: Ronald M. Gould and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges, and Frederic Block, * District Judge. Opinion by Judge Gould * The Honorable Frederic Block, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation. 2 ARREY V. BARR SUMMARY ** Immigration The panel granted in part a petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision affirming an immigration judge’s denial of asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture to a citizen of Cameroon, and remanded. The panel rejected petitioner’s contention that she was deprived of her due process right to a full and fair hearing based on the denial of her right to retained counsel and an unbiased fact finder. The panel held that the IJ in this case provided petitioner reasonable time to locate an attorney, where the IJ provided several continuances so she could do so, warned her repeatedly that he would not grant further continuances, and attempted to call her attorney when he failed to appear on the day of her merits hearing. The panel also held that although the IJ was rude and harsh with petitioner, petitioner failed to establish that the IJ’s conduct prejudiced her, where the IJ held a complete hearing and made a thorough decision that fully examined the underlying factual matters, and any potential prejudice caused by the IJ’s questionable adverse credibility determination was cured by the Board’s subsequent decision assuming the credibility of petitioner’s testimony in full. The panel held that the Board committed three legal errors in its application of the firm resettlement bar, which ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. ARREY V. BARR 3 precludes asylum relief if an applicant was firmly resettled in another country prior to arriving in the United States. First, the panel held that the Board erred by failing to consider whether the conditions of petitioner’s offer of resettlement in South Africa were too restricted for her to be firmly resettled. Second, the panel held that the Board erred by applying the firm resettlement rule not as a mandatory bar to petitioner’s asylum claim, but instead as a limitation on the evidence the Board considered in support of her claim for relief from removal to Cameroon, thus causing the Board to improperly ignore evidence of the abuse petitioner suffered in Cameroon before fleeing to South Africa, as well as evidence of the nature of her relationship with her abuser. Third, the panel held that the Board erred by applying the firm resettlement bar to petitioner’s withholding of ...
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