NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAR 28 2019 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT JUAN MAURICIO CASTILLO, No. 17-72544 Petitioner, Agency No. A073-244-050 v. MEMORANDUM* WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted January 15, 2019 San Francisco, California Before: WALLACE and FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judges, and LASNIK,** District Judge. Petitioner Juan Castillo petitions for review of a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying his request for deferral of withholding under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We review the BIA’s decision for substantial evidence, reversing only if * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Robert S. Lasnik, United States District Judge for the Western District of Washington, sitting by designation. “the evidence compels the conclusion” that its decision was incorrect. Gu v. Gonzales, 454 F.3d 1014, 1018 (9th Cir. 2006). “[W]here, as here, the BIA reviewed the IJ’s decision for clear error and provided more than a ‘boilerplate opinion,’ we may . . . look to the ‘IJ’s oral decision as a guide to what lay behind the BIA’s conclusion[s].’” Guo v. Sessions, 897 F.3d 1208, 1214 n.4 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting Tekle v. Mukasey, 533 F.3d 1044, 1051 (9th Cir. 2008)). We will review “the reasons explicitly identified by the BIA, and then examine the reasoning articulated in the IJ’s oral decision in support of those reasons.” Id. (quoting Tekle, 533 F.3d at 1051). 1. We have jurisdiction over Castillo’s petition. See Pechenkov v. Holder, 705 F.3d 444, 448 (9th Cir. 2012). 2. The Agency erred in its consideration of Dr. Boerman’s testimony about the risk of torture faced by Castillo. The IJ “consider[ed] some of Dr. Boerman’s statements to be exaggerated.” One of the reasons the IJ gave for this conclusion was: “the notion that [the asserted] multi-agency governmental corruption is commonplace seems to contradict Dr. Boerman’s written declaration, which states that ‘[not all] Salvadoran officials are corrupt; there are thousands of public servants of the highest integrity, skill and professionalism.’” But there is no inherent contradiction between official corruption being commonplace and the existence of thousands of dedicated, honest public servants. 2 Petitioner objected before the BIA to this illogical aspect of the IJ’s reasons for rejecting Dr. Boerman’s testimony.1 But the BIA did not correct this error in reasoning or otherwise explain why it would deny Castillo’s CAT claim even without that aspect of the IJ’s reasoning. Seemingly in at least partial response to Castillo’s arguments about errors in the IJ’s evaluation of Dr. Boerman’s testimony, the BIA stated that the IJ had found Dr. Boerman “credible.” To the contrary, the IJ did not appear to find Dr. Boerman credible. The BIA did recognize that the IJ concluded Dr. Boerman “exaggerated the risk of harm to the applicant.” But the BIA discussed—and found no ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals