NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUL 14 2021 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT NEPTALI LORETO MORALES, No. 19-70404 Petitioner, Agency No. A095-008-910 v. MEMORANDUM* MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted June 10, 2021 Pasadena, California Before: MURGUIA and BADE, Circuit Judges, and MOLLOY,** District Judge. Neptali Loreto Morales, a citizen of El Salvador and Mexico, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) decision affirming an Immigration Judge’s (IJ) denial of his application for asylum and withholding of removal. He also challenges the agency’s decision not to conduct a competency * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Donald W. Molloy, United States District Judge for the District of Montana, sitting by designation. evaluation or grant a continuance so he could gather additional evidence related to his competency. Exercising jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252, we deny the petition. 1. The agency did not abuse its discretion by failing to conduct a competency inquiry. “[I]f an applicant shows ‘indicia of incompetency,’ the IJ has an independent duty to determine whether the applicant is competent.” Mejia v. Sessions, 868 F.3d 1118, 1121 (9th Cir. 2017) (citation omitted). Here, the only possible indicium of incompetency was a statement by counsel at the beginning of a hearing that Loreto Morales “just informed [him] a couple days ago that he has severe PTSD.” As both the IJ and the BIA reasoned, a bare reference to possible PTSD, lacking any corroboration or details about symptoms, treatment, or other mental health conditions, and “without evidence of an inability to understand the nature and object of the proceedings, [is] insufficient to show mental incompetency,” Salgado v. Sessions, 889 F.3d 982, 985 (9th Cir. 2018). See id. at 984–88 (explaining that the bare assertion of recent memory loss was insufficient to trigger a competency inquiry); see also In re M-A-M-, 25 I. & N. Dec. 474, 480 (BIA 2011) (“[W]e . . . recognize that there are many types of mental illness that, even though serious, would not prevent a respondent from meaningfully 2 participating in immigration proceedings.”).1 2. The agency did not abuse its discretion in denying Loreto Morales’s request for a continuance. “When evaluating an IJ’s denial of a motion for continuance we consider a number of factors—including, for example, (1) the importance of the evidence, (2) the unreasonableness of the immigrant’s conduct, (3) the inconvenience to the court, and (4) the number of continuances previously granted.” Cui v. Mukasey, 538 F.3d 1289, 1292 (9th Cir. 2008). All four factors support the denial of a continuance. First, it was unlikely that a two-week continuance would have yielded meaningful evidence given counsel’s admission that he “couldn’t find indications” that Loreto Morales was even “seeing [a] psychiatrist,” or taking any medications for PTSD.2 Second, …
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