Valentinov-Kovace

MEMORANDUM

Petitioner Boriana Valentinov-Kovace (Kovace), aka Boriana Kovatcheve, a thirty-six year old native and citizen of Bulgaria, seeks review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s (BIA) final order of removal. Kovace filed for political asylum and withholding of removal, asserting that she had experienced persecution in Bulgaria on account of her membership in the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith. As the facts and procedural history are familiar to the parties, we do not recite them here except as necessary to explain our decision. This court has jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 . We deny the petition for review.

Although the BIA was unpersuaded by the IJ’s credibility determination, it adopted the IJ’s decision to deny Kovace’s petition based on a failure to show past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution. The BIA did not err in limiting the scope of its opinion in this way, see Abebe v. Gonzales, 432 F.3d 1037, 1040-41 (9th Cir.2005) (en banc), and on appeal we consider only those portions of the IJ decision that the BIA adopted, Santos-Lemus v. Mukasey, 542 F.3d 738, 742 (9th Cir.2008). In addition, Kovace is mistaken in her belief that the BIA was…