Pozos

MEMORANDUM **

Petitioner Miguel Pozos, a native and citizen of Mexico, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s (“BIA”) affirmance of the immigration judge’s (“IJ”) denial of his application for asylum and withholding of removal. When, as here, the BIA does not express any disagreement with any part of the IJ’s decision but instead cites Matter of Burbano, 20 I. & N. Dec. 872, 874 , 1994 WL 520994 (BIA 1994), the BIA is considered to have adopted the IJ’s decision in its entirety and we review the IJ’s reasons as *631 the BIA’s. See Tchoukhrova v. Gonzales, 404 F.3d 1181, 1188 (9th Cir.2005).

Pozos’s testimony, which the IJ deemed credible and this court must thus accept as true, see Baballah v. Ashcroft, 367 F.3d 1067, 1073 (9th Cir.2004) (as amended), compels a finding of past persecution. First, the harm Pozos suffered— including being raped, repeatedly beaten, and forced to work as a prostitute — clearly rose to the level of persecution under the law of this circuit. See Lazo-Majano v. INS, 813 F.2d 1432, 1434 (9th Cir.1987), overruled on other grounds by Fisher v. INS, 79 F.3d 955, 963 (9th Cir.1996) (en banc); see also Kebede v. Ashcroft, 366 F.3d 808,…

dissenting.

Pozos maintains he is not a homosexual, and this surely constitutes sufficient evidence to support a finding to that effect. The Immigration Judge also found that if Pozos avoids public displays of affection with other men and does not frequent gay establishments, he will not be harassed. Pozos does not claim to have any desire to engage in these activities, and there is no evidence he has done so while in the United States. In fact, he was diagnosed with sexual aversion disorder, and has eschewed sexual relations with either gender.

In light of this evidence, the IJ found that Pozos will not be subject to persecution “if he should return to another area of Mexico City, apart from any areas where his prior acquaintances lived.” The Board of Immigration Appeals further found that “the likelihood of continued interest in the respondent [by his persecutor] is diminished by the fact that he has been out of Mexico since April 1987.” These findings are supported by the record and render Pozos’s fear of future persecution objectively unfounded. See 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.13 (b)(l)(i)(A), (B); Prasad v. INS, 47 F.3d 336, 338 (9th Cir.1995). I would therefore deny Pozos’s petition…