Sekou Doukoure v. William Barr


FILED NOT FOR PUBLICATION OCT 23 2020 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT SEKOU DOUKOURE, No. 19-70769 Petitioner, Agency No. A216-272-049 v. MEMORANDUM* WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted October 19, 2020 San Francisco, California Before: THOMAS, Chief Judge, and KELLY** and MILLER, Circuit Judges. Petitioner Sekou Doukoure, a native and citizen of Guinea, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) dismissal of his appeal from the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) denial of his application for asylum, withholding of removal, and Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) relief. We have jurisdiction * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Paul J. Kelly, Jr., United States Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, sitting by designation. under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(1), and we deny the petition in part and dismiss it in part. Because the parties are familiar with the history of the case, we need not recount it here. 1. Substantial evidence supports the IJ’s and the BIA’s adverse credibility determination and, consequently, the agency’s conclusion that Petitioner is not entitled to asylum or withholding of removal. Where the BIA provides multiple grounds for an adverse credibility finding, as it did here, the finding must be upheld so long as one ground is nontrivial and supported by substantial evidence. Cortez-Pineda v. Holder, 610 F.3d 1118, 1125 n.8 (9th Cir. 2010); Shrestha v. Holder, 590 F.3d 1034, 1043–48 (9th Cir. 2010). Here, the record demonstrates inconsistencies in Petitioner’s testimony and other statements of record concerning whether he had family other than his immediate family living near him in Guinea, and when he last saw his mother. The evidence Petitioner presented was not “‘so compelling that no reasonable factfinder could find that [he] was not credible.’” Malkandi v. Holder, 576 F.3d 906, 917 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Farah v. Ashcroft, 348 F.3d 1153, 1156 (9th Cir. 2003)). We lack jurisdiction to consider Petitioner’s challenges to the IJ’s reliance on an omission from his asylum application and the IJ’s finding that Petitioner 2 provided non-responsive testimony because Petitioner did not raise those issues before the BIA. 8 U.S.C. § 1252(d)(1). The adverse credibility determination is sufficient to support the denial of relief because the IJ found that the other evidence of record did not sufficiently support Petitioner’s claims for asylum or withholding of removal, and Petitioner did not appeal those findings to the BIA. 2. Substantial evidence supports the agency’s decision to deny relief under the CAT. An adverse credibility determination is not necessarily fatal to a CAT claim. Kamalthas v. INS, 251 F.3d 1279, 1283–84 (9th Cir. 2001). However, when the petitioner is found not credible, the record apart from the petitioner’s testimony must compel the conclusion that it is more likely than not that ...

Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals