Milomir Djuric v. Eric Holder, Jr.

MEMORANDUM

Milomir Djuric petitions for review of the BIA’s denial of his application for asylum, withholding of removal, and discretionary waiver of entry fraud. We remand for the BIA to consider the humanitarian branch of Djuric’s discretionary asylum claim and otherwise deny the petition.

1. The BIA upheld the Immigration Judge’s (IJ) denial of withholding of removal by adopting the relevant portion of the IJ’s findings and reasoning, so we look to both decisions when assessing Djuric’s withholding of removal claim. See Alaelua v. INS, 45 F.3d 1379, 1381-82 (9th Cir.1995); Shrestha v. Holder, 590 F.3d 1034, 1039 (9th Cir.2010). The BIA accepted the IJ’s finding that Djuric suffered past persecution in Bosnia on the basis of his ethnicity and properly placed the burden on the government to show that Djuric could safely and reasonably relocate within Bosnia. See 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16 (b)(3)(ii). The agency’s conclusion that the government met that burden is supported by substantial evidence. See INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478 , 481 n. 1, 112 S.Ct. 812 , 117 L.Ed.2d 38 (1992) (“To reverse the BIA finding we must find that the evidence not only supports [a contrary] conclusion,…