Uladzimir Sliusar v. Eric Holder, Jr.

MEMORANDUM

Appellants Uladzimir Sliusar and derivatively Aliaksandra Hryhoryeva, citizens of Belarus, petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals decision affirming an Immigration Judge’s denial of their application for asylum, withholding of removal, protection under the Convention Against Torture, and determination that Sliusar filed a frivolous asylum application. Where, as here, the BIA incorporates parts of the IJ’s decision while providing its own analysis, we review those incorporated portions of the IJ’s decision but otherwise confine our analysis to the BIA opinion. Gonzalez v. INS, 82 F.3d 903, 907 (9th Cir.1996). Decisions of the agency are reviewed under the substantial evidence standard and must be affirmed if they are “supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on the record considered as a whole.” Donchev v. Mukasey, 553 F.3d 1206, 1213 (9th Cir.2009) (citing to INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 481 , 112 S.Ct. 812 , 117 L.Ed.2d 38 (1992)).

Petitioners were admitted to the United States on June 4, 2004, in Newark, New Jersey. Sliusar applied for asylum on January 27, 2005. On June 27, 2006, the IJ, after a hearing on the merits,…