NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS AUG 15 2018 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT XIAO LIN ZHU, No. 16-71226 Petitioner, Agency No. A098-215-527 v. MEMORANDUM* JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS III, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted July 9, 2018 Portland, Oregon Before: WARDLAW and OWENS, Circuit Judges, and MÁRQUEZ,** District Judge. Xiao Lin Zhu, a native and citizen of China, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) denial of her motion to reopen based on changed country conditions. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252. * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Rosemary Márquez, United States District Judge for the District of Arizona, sitting by designation. We grant the petition for review and remand to the BIA with instructions to reopen proceedings. “We review denials of motions to reopen for abuse of discretion, and defer to the BIA’s exercise of discretion unless it acted arbitrarily, irrationally, or contrary to law. We review the BIA’s determination of purely legal questions de novo, and review its factual findings for substantial evidence.” Najmabadi v. Holder, 597 F.3d 983, 986 (9th Cir. 2010) (citations omitted). When considering whether a petitioner has demonstrated changed country conditions, “‘[t]he critical question is . . . whether circumstances have changed sufficiently that a petitioner who previously did not have a legitimate claim’ now does.” Agonafer v. Sessions, 859 F.3d 1198, 1204 (9th Cir. 2017) (quoting Malty v. Ashcroft, 381 F.3d 942, 945 (9th Cir. 2004)). The BIA determined that Zhu failed to demonstrate that conditions had changed sufficiently to warrant reopening her asylum application. This conclusion was an abuse of discretion. Zhu submitted numerous United States government reports and local Chinese government documents demonstrating a material change in China’s enforcement of its restrictive family-planning policies between 2004 and 2015. The documents show that in 2004, enforcement of the one-child policy was casual in Zhu’s home province of Fujian. For instance, a 1998 State Department report found that the policy was enforced “loosely” in Fujian; that violators were “at 2 worst, given modest fines;” and that Fujian’s “lax enforcement” was “criticized in the official press.” According to the 2004 State Department report, U.S. Consulate General officials had seen “no evidence of forced abortion,” with the exception of a single hospital administrator’s vague reference to “‘measures’ (unspecified).”1 Indeed, the BIA itself has relied on many of these exact same documents to conclude that an asylum-seeker who had two children in the United States—the very situation faced by Zhu—did not have a well-founded fear of forced sterilization if returned to Fujian Province in 2007. In re J-W-S-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 185, 192–93 (B.I.A. 2007) (noting, in reaching this conclusion, that “[e]nforcement efforts in Fujian Province, in particular, have in the past been described as ‘lax’ or ...
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