Villatoro

MEMORANDUM

Luis Fernando Villatoro, a native and citizen of Guatemala, petitions pro se for review of a final decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) dismissing his appeal of an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) denial of his application for suspension of deportation. Pursuant to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (“IIRIRA”), the transitional rules apply, see Kalaiv v. INS, 133 F.3d 1147, 1150 (9th Cir.1997), and we therefore have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1105a(a), as amended by IIRIRA § 309(c), see Avetova-Elisseva v. INS, 213 F.3d 1192 , 1195 n. 4 (9th Cir.2000). We grant the petition for review.

The IJ’s premature application of the stop-time rule, see Astrero v. INS, 104 F.3d 264, 266 (9th Cir.1996), resulted in the IJ’s conclusion that petitioner had not *644 met his continuous physical presence requirement for eligibility for suspension of deportation. Because the IJ denied petitioner’s application based solely on this conclusion, and the BIA failed to correct the IJ’s procedural error, we grant the petition for review. We remand to the BIA with instructions to remand to the IJ to consider the application for suspension of…