Shpetim Hoxha v. John Ashcroft, Attorney General

Petitioner Shpetim Hoxha, an ethnic Albanian male from what used to be the Kosovo region of Serbia, entered this country as a student and overstayed his visa. In deportation proceedings he applied for asylum, 8 U.S.C. § 1158 , and withholding of deportation, 8 U.S.C. § 1231 (b)(3), but the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) held that he was not eligible for either. Hoxha petitions for review. We conclude that substantial evidence does not support the BIA’s denial of eligibility for asylum but does support the denial of withholding of deportation. We accordingly grant the petition for review, reverse the decision of the BIA holding Hoxha ineligible for asylum, and remand to the BIA so that it may exercise its discretion whether to grant asylum.

I

Ethnic Albanians make up about ninety percent of Kosovo’s population of two million people, but, at the time of Hoxha’s asylum hearing in February 1999, they were still a minority within Serbia as a whole. Because many Serbs, as well as the Serbian government, considered Koso-vo to be a traditional part of Serbia, the existence of a substantial Albanian population sparked widespread violence and bloodshed between Albanians seeking…