Dawwod

MEMORANDUM **

Rhand Ibrahim Dawwod, her husband, and their child (Petitioners), natives and citizens of Ix’aq, seek review of an Immigration Judge’s (IJ) denial, summarily affirmed by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), of their applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT).

Dawwod and her husband are Chaldean Christians who lived in Iraq prior to arriving in the United States. They both testified that in Iraq they suffered multiple incidents of abuse at the hands of Ba’ath *549 Party officials and “Islamic extremists.” The IJ found their testimony was “credible and consistent,” and implicitly accepted that they had satisfied their burden of establishing past persecution.

The burden thus shifted to the government to establish a change in circumstances in Iraq such that Petitioners would no longer have a well-founded fear of future persecution. See 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13 (b)(l)(ii). The IJ, however, appears to have placed the burden on Petitioners to establish that their presumption was not rebutted by the fall of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party:

Our case law requires that “the BIA ... provide an ‘individualized…